The 92nd volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed series customarily begins with the conclusion to the story that closed out the previous volume. Conan gets dragged along to the shopping mall to pick out new swim suits, but Rachel, Serena and Sera's shopping spree is rudely interrupted when even ruder customer of a clothing boutique is murdered – strangled to death in a fitting room. Plot-wise, the story is a howdunit with a dying message and a couple of suspects, but not a very good or memorable one. Another case of a late-period story written around ideas/trivia for tricks, which can and has worked in past stories. This is just not one of them. It felt too contrived to me. Nor did it help that every other story in this volume is so much better with much simpler, better played out plots.
So the next story is a flashback when an actual six-year-old Conan, or Jimmy Kudo, visited the beach that day together with his mother and Rachel, which is where they meet a six-year-old Sera – who's at the beach with her mother and two older brothers. It goes without saying their identities, and backstories, tread neck deep in spoiler territory as it answers a lot questions posed since Sera's introduction all the way back in vol. 73. Fortunately, this important character-arc is complimented by an excellently handled, neatly executed and clued side-puzzle.
While the beach goers are enjoying themselves, a speeding car crashes through a guardrail of a cliff and plunges into the sea. The body of the driver is pulled out of the sunken car with a broken neck and a bag full of expensive, stolen designer watches complete with price tags. Someone was sitting in the passenger seat, but got out of the car and appears to have blended with the beach goers. So the police find and detail three people who bought new, dry clothes after the car crashed into the sea. They all have an explanation why they bought new clothes, but the stories prove hard to verify and they have to fall back on some good, old-fashioned Ellery Queen-style detective work. Not just the excellent clueing and sound reasoning from those excellent clues, but how the clues dovetail and logically click together. A perfect demonstration of how the visual detective story can show without telling or muddling certain details. Not to mention that a minor detective story can still be great and it was fun seeing Conan/Jimmy as an actual child with his deductive abilities still very much underdeveloped. So it's not him who solves the case, but a fantastic story all around.
The next story can also be described as a fairly minor, but still excellent, story beginning with the famous private eye, Richard Moore, winning a million yen (about $10,000) on a horse race bet. So he takes Rachel and Conan to the sushi restaurant next door to celebrate his lucky win. This time, the case interrupting their dinner is a woman who storms into the restaurant to retrieve her stolen carry-all from the toilet. She had been robbed of her carry-all on the train and traced it back to the sushi restaurant with a tracking app, but the pickpocket took "a winning slip from a horse race worth one million yen" before dumping it in the toilet. Fortunately, she had to opportunity to mark the pickpocket's white cuff with her bloody tumb, however, the three suspects in the restaurant have clean sleeves. So who did it?
Not a terribly complicated case, but a very well-handled, reasonably clued and fun little detective story. One that served to introduce a new, fun character, Kanenorih Wakita, who's a buck-teethed, eye-patched "wandering chef" and a mystery fan since he was "yea high" – who greatly admires the famous "Sleeping Moore." Wakita tries to impress Moore with his deductions and even provides a false-solution to the story, which immediately sets Conan on edge ("...Rum has one eye"). Another story I really enjoyed.
The next, last complete, story of this volume continues the trend of minor, but excellent, stories with a modern take on the Columbo-style inverted mystery.
Rumi Wakasa was introduced in the previous volume as the new assistant, clumsy assistant teacher at Teitan Elementary School, but, as often is the case with these newly introduced, recurring characters, something is off. This story hammers that fact home. Wakasa invited Conan and the Junior Detective League to her apartment to help paint a tiger screen for the school play, but trouble comes knocking when a murder is discovered next door. A rising and promising golf player, Teigo Banno, is found unconscious next to the bludgeoned body of his girlfriend, Kurumi Iyama. Banno claims all he can remember is some weird, pale-looking woman tased him when he opened the door. This woman apparently left trace evidence behind of her presence. She wrote "I love you" with a marker on Banno's cheek and photographed the act as she left behind a Polaroid picture showing her pale, white hand writing on his cheek with Iyama lying dead in the frame. Just as importantly, it shows his right hand under his head that eliminated the possibility of the imaginary-girlfriend-photo-trick.
Practically shackling yourself to a corpse, instead of creating the illusion of distance in time and/or space, is quite the dare devil alibi. The solution shattering his audacious alibi is not half bad. Simple, satisfying and a cleverly makes use of (ROT13) gur cevapvcyrf bs gur pbecfr-chmmyr jvgubhg qvfzrzorevat gur ivpgvz. This story is not only a good inverted mystery, but throws Rumi Wakasa in an uncomfortable new light. Wakasa had overheard Banno and Iyama fighting that morning when Banno tried to end their relationship, but she disagreed and demanded a one-hundred million yen (about $1 million) heart balm – which would clean him out. Iyama threatens to call in her daddy lawyer, if he doesn't agree to the payout. Banno gets her to agree to discuss the matter of dinner, but as Iyama was walking away, Wakasa him mutter, "this is gonna be your last supper." Not only did she nothing to prevent the murder, but she invited Conan over to become involved in the murder! Things are getting interesting en route to vol. 100!
This volume closes with the first chapter of the story that will be continued, and concluded, in the next volume, but the setup is already promising. The story brings Conan and Harley Hartwell to Coffee Poirot, where Toru Amuro works, when a customer is stabbed during a brief blackout. Not much more to say about this story, so far, except that the mysterious, nameless customer is more intriguing than the setup of the murder. When a new character appears, recurring or one-off, they always get a box with their name, age and occupation/role. All we got for this character is "???? (?) CUSTOMER." Like I said, things are getting interesting!
I ended the review of vol. 91 that the stories tended to be more entertaining than good, first-rate mysteries and primarily served to setup new pieces for the ongoing storyline, but the stories making up vol. 92 pulled off both (and more) to full satisfaction. The cases that were intertwined with the main story-threads are solidly constructed, often admirably clued stories, while the character-arcs and plot developments added an edge and subtle suspense to the overall volume. Maybe one of the best, certainly one of the most important, volumes in a while. I can't wait for vol. 93 to be published in January!
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