More Than Zero: Case Closed, vol. 84 by Gosho Aoyama

Gosho Aoyama's 84th volume of Case Closed (Detective Conan) traditionally begins with the concluding chapters to the case that closed out the previous volume, a prequel story, which takes place before Jimmy Kudo became Conan Edogawa during a trip to the aquarium – where someone predictably got killed. A man is stabbed to death in the aquarium tunnel and some detective work, amateur and professional, whittles down the crowd of potential suspects down to three: the victim's current girlfriend, his ex-girlfriend and her current boyfriend. There's just one problem. All three suspects possess waterproof alibis as all three were shooting a video on their smartphones. 

Case Closed began serialization in 1994 and tried to keep pace with the changing times. Just think how much the world changed between 1994, 2004 and 2014, which is when this volume was originally published in Japan. So the series deserve applause for always trying to come up with ways to apply modern technology to the classically-styled detective stories and a really fine example is the elevator case from vol. 79. A story that uses modern-day technology to straight up warp people's perception of reality with the only drawback being that the execution of the trick was a little rough around the edges. Some can be said of this prequel story. The smartphone alibi is perfectly fine in theory, but strains credulity in practice as it requires very specific, even contrived circumstances to work. A second problem is that the presence of 2014 smartphones look really weird in a prequel story from a series that began in 1994. I know only about a year has passed, in-universe, but this story clashes with earlier stories featuring '90s fax machines and '00s flip phones.

This observation comes with the benefit of hindsight, but it might have been better had Aoyama frozen the series, culturally and technological, somewhere between '94 and '04. It would have come at the cost of most of these innovative, tech-based detective stories. However, placing the series in a clearly defined period of time would have improved continuity and the reader's perception of time passed, because it feels like nearly two decades past instead of merely a year. And, as the next few stories demonstrate, continuity is the foundation of Case Closed.

The second story has Conan and the Junior Detective League participating in a kite-flying competition, which becomes the scene of a nearly fatal accident when one of the kite-fliers nearly drowned in the river. Ryota Renno was holding his kite, while taking walking backwards, but the guard rope behind him was broken and tumbled backwards – suggesting nothing more than a simple accident. Conan astutely observes that the guard rope only looks like it had snapped a long time ago. Somebody lured him into the river and there are three potential suspects, but none of them was anywhere near him. So how could they have impelled him to walk into the river? The trick has all "the cleverness of a child" and the comic book format helped make the clueing a whole fairer than it would have been otherwise, but resolving the problem can also be filed away under "contrived circumstances." A fairly minor and average story.

Unfortunately, the third and weakest story of the collection can, plot-wise, also be described as contrived, but the plot plays second fiddle to the main, ongoing storyline that begins to take precedent as the build towards vol. 85 begins. More about that in a minute. Conan, Rachel and Richard Moore visit Eva Kaden, who had her appendix removed, in the hospital when someone gets poisoned under quasi-impossible circumstances. Three women were cheering up a hospitalized friend with an impromptu tea party, but one cup of tea contained poison and the obvious answer is that the murderer, in an unguarded moment, swapped the victim's teacup with a poisoned one. However, they were all drinking differently flavored and colored teas ("one's brown, one's blue and one's yellow") with the victim's "was drinking a red blend" with a slice of lemon in it. Normally, this series is quite good at poisonous puzzles, but this case is not one of them. However, Conan has something else on his mind as Toru Amuro turns up at the hospital to ask questions about events from the novel-length vol. 58.

The fourth and final case follows the pattern of the previous story, but with even more familiar faces turning up. A schoolteacher is viciously attacked and left for dead in a public park, clumsily disguised as an accident, but the victim had a direct connection to the two FBI agents, Jodie Sterling and Andre Camel – who had engaged Amuro as a private investigator "because she was being victimized by a stalker." So, while they try to figure out whether the culprit is a stalking colleague or a disgruntled parent, Conan also attempts to probe Amuro's true intentions. Sometimes even the best detectives can be surprised at the answers they get ("I think you're a bit mistaken about me"). The case of whom attacked the teacher is descent enough, but all of the interest here went to the ongoing storyline and setting up the next volume. Another long, volume spanning story tidying up several story-arcs that have fueled the series ever since vol. 58. I very much look forward to the pay-off!

Admittedly, I expected a little more from this volume with the individual cases turning out to be mostly average and without the red-threads, of the main story-arcs, it would have been a pretty poor volume overall. So all its strength is in building towards that big story and getting a taste of things to come. I eagerly look forward to the pay-off!