The Scythe of Time: Case Closed, vol. 73 by Gosho Aoyama + Bonus Mini-Review

The 73rd volume of Gosho Aoyama's long-running Case Closed series, published in Japan and elsewhere as Detective Conan, begins with the two concluding chapters of the fascinating story that ended the previous volume, "The Blade of the Keeper of Time" – a clock-themed impossible crime in the spirit of John Dickson Carr and John Rhode. A seemingly impossible murder announced in a letter that was signed "The Guardian of Time."

Rukako Hoshina is a wealthy family matriarch with an obsession for clocks, but every year, she receives a threatening letter accusing her of disrespecting "the flow of time" and foretells she'll fall to "a shapeless sword" at the time she came into the world. So she hired the well-known sleeping detective, Richard Moore, who's accompanied by Conan and Rachel to the Western-style clock mansion of his client. Unfortunately, they're unable to prevent the murderer from striking down Moore's client.

Just as she blew out the candles on her birthday cake, the lights went out and Rukako Hoshina was stabbed in the chest. When the lights came back on, the murderer appeared to have disappeared through the open door of the balcony, but it had been raining until early in the evening and the ground below was muddy – unmarked by any footprints. So the killer hasn't left the house, but the spray pattern showed the culprit had to be "doused in blood." Nobody had enough blood on them to have delivered the fatal blow. And what happened to the murder weapon?

There are many cogs and wheels moving to make this locked room-trick work, which makes it workmanlike rather than inspired, but what makes the story brilliant is the nature of the shapeless sword, why the murderer didn't get spattered with blood and the "strange description" of the culprit who brushed against several people when the lights went out. A description suggesting "a large, fat, fast-moving woman in a dress." So, on a whole, a very satisfying detective story.

The second story has a familiar premise, a poisoning at a restaurant, which has become one of the specialties of the house in this series, but, more interestingly, it leaves Conan alone with Moore – who rarely, if ever, tackle a case without Rachel being there. Rachel is staying at school overnight to practice with her classmates for the big karate tournament and this means he has to Conan out to have dinner, but Coffee Poirot is closed and they end up at a grimy, rundown noodle shack with "ramen to die for." And the ramen proved to be absolutely delicious!

Conan and Moore learn that the owner is feuding with an unscrupulous real estate developer, Tokumori Saizu, who has been trying to buy out all the stores on the block to make place for a shopping mall. Saizu doesn't shun rough, underhanded tactics to get his way. So when he drops dead in the restaurant, of cyanide poisoning, everyone present has a rock solid motive, but how did the murderer administer this very dangerous poison?

Aoyama is one of the most versatile plotters of our time, who can turn his hand to any kind of chicanery, but, when it comes to doling out poison, he's the uncrowned king of poisoning tricks – even better than either Agatha Christie or Paul Doherty. For example, the ingenious method employed, in volume 15, to poison a loan shark or the murder, in volume 63, at a sushi bar where plates of food can be taken randomly from a conveyor belt. Yes, here too, Aoyama came up with another deceivingly simplistic method to transfer a deadly amount of poison to the victim without him being aware of it. As if the murderer "was pulling his strings from the moment he walked in," but it always makes me a little antsy to see how cyanide is being handled in these stories. Nevertheless, a solid story with a very well done setting and trick.

The third story introduces a new character, Masumi Sera, who's a self-proclaimed high school detective ("a girl Kudo") and recently transferred into Rachel and Serena's class, but she seems very interested in Conan. She becomes involved in a case with him when they're both present when a phone scammer apparently jumped to his death. Conan and Sera astutely deduce that the scammer was cleverly murdered, however, picking apart the carefully planned and executed trick takes some time and ingenuity. Conan has to phone in his part of the solution with his Jimmy Kudo voice. A good introduction to a new character with a trick that used an cast-iron alibi to create an impossible crime.

The premise of the last story immediately reminded me of Ed McBain's Killer's Wedge (1959) with the grieving brother of a dead mystery writer strapping explosives to his chest and taking Richard Moore, Rachel, Sera and three other people hostage at his office – demanding that the famous "Sleeping Moore" solves the murder of his sister. Miku Sawaguri has become one of the youngest, bestselling mystery novelists in Japan, but she apparently committed suicide at a hot spring, inside a locked room, by slitting her wrists. Something her brother refuses to accept and believes that one of the three women, all aspiring mystery writers, who went with her to hot springs murdered her. So, once again, Conan has to assume his old identity over the phone to help Moore identify the murderer. And, hopefully, prevent a bloodbath. This story will be concluded in the next volume.

So, all in all, volume 73 was one of the strongest volumes, in a while, full of clever tricks, good settings (ramen shop) and the introduction of new recurring character with ambiguous intentions. A fine example of why Case Closed is the greatest detective story of our time and criminally ignored by Western mystery readers.

But wait, there's more! In my previous blog-post, I reviewed Michael Dahl's second Finnegan Zwake archaeological mystery novel, The Worm Tunnel (1999), which is a series I described as a cross between Case Closed and the 1990s cartoon-series, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest. Something unexpectedly came my way that was perfect to tack on to this review.

During the mid-to late 1990s, HarperCollins published eleven TV tie-in novels of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, written by Brad Quentin, but calling them novels is being generous, because my edition of Peril in the Peaks (1996) only has 110 pages in large print – which probably means you could reissue the entire series as one, or two, short story collections. The Quest Team travel to the remote Tibetan mountains where an ancient ghost plane has been spotted and cargo planes disappear without a trace in place called Cloud Alley. Soon they're embroiled with cloud surfing sky pirates and have to cross swords with the dictator of long-lost valley, named Sharma-La, where people have lived under the cover of a mysterious and magical blanket of clouds for more than fifty years. The people believe the clouds protect their spiritual leader, The Little Lama, who hasn't aged for the better part of a century!

So there's more than enough to do for the Quest Team and Quentin packed those scant, 110-pages with a ton of adventurous scenes and exciting developments, which made for an entertaining, fast-paced read, but the only real reason to pick up one of these tie-in stories is nostalgia and nothing else. If you're feeling nostalgic, Peril in the Peaks will give you a fun hour of childhood escapism.

Rescue Rangers: Case Closed, vol. 72 by Gosho Aoyama

The 72nd volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, originally published in Japan as Detective Conan, begins with the conclusion to the massive story that covered nine of the eleven chapters of the previous volume, which brought Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan to London – where Conan becomes engaged in a hunt for Sherlock Holmes-themed clues. A hunt leading him straight to Wimbledon where he has to prevent the public assassination of the Queen of the Grass Court, Minerva Glass.

Plot-wise, the last act of this story is pretty standard for the series with Conan having to locate the culprit in a capacity-filled stadium, which has been done before, but the tennis setting provided a way to make this culprit stick out "like a sore thumb." However, the plot played second fiddle here to the main-characters and particular the story-line between Jimmy/Conan and Rachel.

The second story begins with Conan and Anita discussing the former's adventure in England. Interestingly, Anita addresses my complaint mentioned in my review of volume 71.

I can see how it made sense to keep Jimmy's predicament a secret from Rachel when the series began, but, in the story, more than two years have passed and the secret has become a story-telling device to create these needlessly complicated personal situations – keeping Jimmy trapped between Rachel and Conan. Logically, she should have been told by now. Aoyama will probably resolve this problem by saying she knew all along and the final panel of the series will show them with their son who's a carbon-copy of Conan.

Anita reminds Conan what he has said about not allowing Rachel to get too close to him, because not being able to be with him would only make her unhappier. So he can't be in the spotlight and has "to hide in the wings until the right moment," but the brats of the Junior Detective League overheard them and misinterpreted it as a suggestion to play a game of hide and seek. One of them knows an abandoned building, scheduled to be demolish, perfect for such a game. During the game, they get "an emergency earthquake alert" on their cellphones and they hear someone knocking out the emergency-code for "Rescue Needed," which leads them to two shady looking construction workers. Conan concludes "a person in need of rescue" from kidnappers is trapped somewhere inside the mostly empty building.

Generally, I dislike kidnapping stories because they're seldom any good, or memorable, but there are two reasons why this story is one of the exceptions. Firstly, the clever way in which Conan and the Junior Detective League used their personalized cellphones to squeeze out of a very tight corner. Secondly, the identity of the kidnap victim came as a genuine surprise. I honestly didn't expect that twist!

The second, complete story of this volume brings Conan, Rachel and Serena Sebastian to Teitan University, renamed here as Baker University, where Richard Moore giving a lecture, but "he's just drooling over college girls" and a group of Film Majors offers them a more palpable sight – a haunted house exhibition. Students are working on a horror movie as their project thesis and want to make it "as realistic as possible." So they created a house of corpses and want to test it on the girls, because Rachel and Serena have seen dead bodies before. The exhibition does what it intended to do... scaring the girls.

One of the film students, Anna Tadami, is strapped to an operating-table and surrounded by dummy surgeons, but, when they walked pass this scene, she started "trembling and thrashing her legs." She shook so hard "it rattled the bed." Anna Tadami was dead! There's "an almond smell" at her mouth and "the remains of capsule between her teeth," which means suicide as Rachel and Serena saw nobody else standing around the operating-table. So a quasi-impossible crime with an obvious murderer, a hack stage-trick and a motive that felt tacked on resulting in an average story at best.

The third case is another kidnap story, of sorts, but this time without Conan, because he's in bed with a serious cold. Conan was supposed to meet the Junior Detective League at Amy's house to play karuta, a Japanese card game, but, when Conan is video chatting with them on his cellphone, a young boy knock's at the door of Amy's department – screaming that there are "bad people" he doesn't know in his apartment. Masao is a boy with a reputation in the apartment building for playing pranks and telling lies, but cries he doesn't know the man and woman who introduce themselves as his parents. And he's dragged back into his apartment. Conan tells them to call the police, but they decide to investigate Amy's neighbors for themselves.

At the heart of the story is a coded message Masao surreptitiously sends under the nose of the culprits to the Junior Detective League over a game of karuta, but this is one of those language-based codes. So practically unsolvable for most non-Japanese speaking readers. Not a bad story, but a pretty minor one.

Sadly, the last chapter is the beginning of new story that will continue in volume 73 and the premise is intriguing, to say the least! Richard Moore is hired to protect the matriarch of the Hoshina family, Rukako Hoshina, who's obsessed with clocks and the ancestral manor house is ticking to the brim with clocks – even has a clock tower. Rukako Hoshina received a death threat accusing her disrespecting "the flow of time" and she'll die at the time she "came into this world." The letter was signed with the moniker, The Guardian of Time. I can't wait to read the rest of the story!

So, all things considered, this volume can be summed up as an average entry with only one good story and the conclusion of the London-case as its sole standout moment. I don't think it helped either that it ended with a teaser of a case that already promises to be much better than the three complete cases that preceded it. Oh, well, here's hoping for the best in the next volume!

A Devil on the Court: Case Closed, vol. 71 by Gosho Aoyama

The 71st volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, originally published in Japan as Detective Conan, is an unusual entry in the series as the only two stories in it, a short and a long one, focus entirely on breaking codes and finding hidden messages – only hint at murder is tucked away in the grim back-story of one of the characters. So, if memory serves me correctly, this is one of only two volumes without a single murder case.

This volume opens with a short, so-called slice-of-life mysteries and takes place in the audio/visual storage room of Teitan Elementary.

Ms. Kobayashi recruits Conan and the Junior Detective League to help her find a videotape in the A.V. storage room, crammed with thousands of tapes with faded or hard-to-read labels, but they also find a former student of the school rummaging around in there. Detective Chiba, of the Metropolitan Police, was a member of the A.V. club and had a crush on a girl who was about to move away. So he wrote her a love letter. She wrote cryptically wrote back that she left her answer in the A.V. storage room and hoped it leave on a mark on him, but Chiba "searched the room from top to bottom." And he couldn't find anything. Now a class reunion is just around the corner and Chiba is determined to find that 13-year-old reply.

A charming story, as most these slice-of-life stories tend to be, with Aoyama's favorite trope (long-lost) childhood friends with a romantic interest. My only problem is that the hidden message seems a little bit too clever to have been concocted by such a young child. And on such a short notice.

The second story covers the remainder of the volume, nine of the eleven chapters, which begins with a hint of the Had-I-But-Known School. A story that "began with a strawberry" and Conan "never imagined that this would set off an adventure" – both "sweet and sour." A lucky incident with a strawberry and cat gave Conan, Rachel and Richard Moore to visit England during a school holiday. Conan is a huge Sherlock Holmes fanboy and he can't wait to visit all the places from Conan Doyle's stories. There are, however, some obstacles to overcome. Such as the pesky problem of his double identity. Just read the series and you'll understand.

Conan eventually makes it to London to embark on his "Sherlock Holmes pilgrimage," something only mystery fans will understand, but he finds several hurdles on his path.

On the doorstep of the Sherlock Holmes Museum, on 221B Baker Street, Conan meets an eight-year-old boy, Apollo Glass, who's the kid brother of tennis-star and "the top-ranked Queen of the Grass Court," Minerva Glass. Earlier that day, Apollo was at the tennis court when he was approached by a man telling him that he'll get "a greater thrill" than he would expect. Someone, somewhere in London, will be murdered in front of him and to tell Scotland Yard – if it doesn't make any sense to "leave it to Holmes." So this mysterious event plunges Conan in hunt around London for Holmesian-themed clues and codes. This part of the story almost reads like a travelogue with the characters hunting around all the London landmarks for clues.

As to be expected, not everything goes smoothly and Conan forgets himself for a moment and makes a mistake. One of several mistakes in this volume. In the first story, he talks as if he was a long-time student at Teitan Elementary, but officially, he has been there for only a year or two. At the start of this story, Conan starts speaking fluently English in front of Rachel and Richard Moore. Conan's third mistake convinces Rachel that Jimmy Kudo is London and has purposely avoiding here.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again, the relationship story-line between Jimmy/Conan and Rachel has become stagnant and a weakness at this point in the series.

I concede that it made absolute sense keeping Jimmy's predicament from Rachel when the series started, but, in the series, nearly two years have passed since the first volume and continuing to keep the secret is now only used as a story-telling device – in order to create these needlessly complicated situations. Logically, Rachel should have been told by now as she would have been valuable alley/cover for his Conan identity. Seriously, I begin to suspect that the final volume will reveal that all these stories were told by Jimmy and Rachel on the coach of an incredulous, harassed-looking relationship counselor. Mark my words!

The penultimate chapter of this story, which will be concluded in the next volume, takes place on the court and the tennis match is one that could only be played in an anime or manga series (e.g. The Prince of Tennis). And even for this series, or anime/manga in general, the code cracking in this part of the story stretched credulity a little too far.

Still this was a fun, if somewhat weird, story and look forward to the last chapter, but don't think it will stand as a classic story-arc in the series. However, I do think this volume, as a whole, stands as a notable example of the code cracking detective story and a Holmesian homage to boot!

Beware of the Dog: Case Closed, vol. 70 by Gosho Aoyama

The 70th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, originally titled Detective Conan in Japan, is composed of two grand stories, involving Harley Hartwell and Kaito KID, but the opening chapter concludes the story that began in the last two chapters of the previous volume – in which the Junior Detective League uncover a dark crime in an empty house haunted by piano music. A very minor and forgettable story.

However, the next two stories are wonderfully done homages to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and Maurice Leblanc.

One of my favorite recurring side-characters returns in the first story, Jirokichi Sebastian, whose foil is that elusive master magician of thievery, Kaito KID, but this time, the game is played a little bit different without the grand traps and counter plots of their previous encounters – e.g. volumes 61, 65 and 68. Aoyama came up with good reason that makes this such an interesting and unusual story.

The story is set against a revival of public interest in a historical figure, Ryōma Sakamoto, who was revolutionary reformer instrumental in setting the stage for the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Jirokichi Sebastian has opened an exhibition devoted to him at the Great Sebastian Museum and the centerpiece is "the jeweled gun belt" that was gifted to Ryōma, which has "a huge ruby embedded in the buckle." Shishihiko Tarumi is the sleazy owner of the belt and had the item authenticated by a shady appraiser, Masanosuke Hanamura, but refused to sell it to Jirokichi. Only agreeing to loan it to him for exhibition.

Normally, the gun belt would be used as bait in an attempt to trap Kaito KID, however, the thief has announced that he'll be visiting the Ryōma exhibition soon, not to steal the gun belt, but "to return three items" that were stolen twenty years ago – namely a half-finished letter, a drinking cup and a Smith & Wesson model 1 revolver. A gift from America that went with the bejeweled belt. These historical items were stolen by "a famous thief and mistress of disguise from the Showa Era," The Phantom Lady, who employed "theatrical tactics straight out of horror movies" to steal from "corrupt companies and crooked millionaires." And the story suggests she's related to KID.

So here the problem is not how KID is going to take a valuable object from the museum, which Jirokichi turned into "a high-tech rat trap," but how he's going to return the stolen loot from twenty years ago. This involves a minor, quasi-impossible problem: how did KID get the revolver pass the metal detector and three security gates.

On a whole, this was a fun little caper with clever bits, such as why KID's scheme required a rainy day, but the inverted take on the traditional heist stories in this series is what made it a truly memorable meeting between Conan, Jirokichi and KID.

The second story is Aoyama's homage to Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles with a dash of Seishi Yokomizo's Inugamike no ichizoku (The Inugami Clan, 1951), which found a completely new way to explain the presence of a spectral beast hounding members of a cursed family to their deaths. A story that begins when Harley Hartwell and Kazuha visit Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan to entice them to join them on a real-life counterpart of the Baskerville case.

Five years ago, the chairman of the Inbushi Group, Tsunechika Inubushi, died of terminal cancer, but, after his death, "tons of people showed up at his family's doorstep" claiming to be his love-children – claims backed up by photos of their mothers with the chairman. However, while the claims could not be fully proved, his widow adopted no less than eight of them! More importantly, the vast family fortune will be divided between them when the now sickly widow dies. And this makes it very suspicious that two of them have died under peculiar circumstances.

One of the victim's fell off a cliff, but lived long enough to tell he had been chased by "a demon dog with a body of blazin' fire." Reputedly, one of the heirs is an impostor with a grudge against the family and is trying to eradicate the bloodline by "summoning a spectral hound."

Hartwell became involved with the case and traveled to Tokyo to talk with one of the heirs, who left the family estate and renounced his inheritance, but they arrived too late. The man is found dead, besides a charcoal stove, with the door and windows sealed with duct tape. A classic locked room mystery, but Conan and Hartwell immediately solve the problem, which I suspected (considering the situation) would borrow its solution from a relatively well-known impossible crime novel by a famous mystery writer – which was not the case. The trick used here is pretty daring and dangerous, but could have been improved by adding a single detail to the murderer's plan.

By the way, the name of the victim happens to be Shinichi Kudo, which is Jimmy Kudo's (Conan) name in the original Japanese manga. There is, however, no deeper meaning to them sharing the same name.

What does deepen the mystery is the explanation to the problem of the sealed room and they decide to go down to the Inubushi estate to tackle the demonic dog head on. But what they got is another murder, a trail of blazing paw-prints and they even witnessed the flaming dog on two separate occasions. On the second time, it attacked one of the heirs before vanishing as if by magic in the dark night.

After a while, the murderer is relatively easily spotted and the explanation for the flaming paw-prints is not entirely convincing, although the clue of the smell of rotten onions was clever, but the trick behind the spectral dog with a body of fire was brilliant – a trick demonstrating that modern innovations hasn't made clever plotting obsolete. This story is basically a retelling of Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles with a modern interpretation of the ghost-trick from Jacques Futrelle's "The Mystery of the Flaming Phantom" (1907). A great story to close out this milestone volume.

So, all in all, this is a solid volume with two great stories featuring some of the series most popular recurring side-characters, which made the weak story that opened it more than forgivable. And now, onwards to volume 80!

On a final note, I compiled a list back in April of my five favorite locked room mysteries and impossible crimes from this series, which you can read here, if you're interested or missed it.

The Locked Room Reader X: My Five Favorite Impossible Crime Stories from Case Closed, vol. 1-69

Previously, I reviewed volume 69 of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, a long-running Japanese detective anime/manga series published in the non-English speaking world as Detective Conan, which is littered with often original, cleverly contrived locked room and impossible crime stories – some of these stories are absolute gems. So, with the release of volume 70 earlier this month, the time had finally come to slap together a best-of list. I managed to keep my list limited to five stories that impressed me for various reasons.

My first pick is known as "The Mist Tengu Case," collected in volume 11, in which Conan Edogawa solves a seemingly impossible murder in a mountain temple haunted by the titular Tengu. A long-nosed goblin who is held responsible for hanging a priest from a beam inside a small, but tall, wooden temple tower with unscalable walls. The locked tower-trick is as ingenious as it's original, but one that only works and is acceptable in comic book format. Still a highly recommendable story with a good plot and setting.

The next story is "The Loan Shark Murder Case," collected in volume 15, which has one of the best and cleverest poisoning-tricks of the entire series.

A loan shark is poisoned with potassium cyanide in his office. However, the whole building had been secured from the inside and everything is tested for traces of cyanide, such as the money the victim had been counting, but without result – until the brilliantly titled chapter, "The Devil's Summons," reveals the trick. A devilishly simplistic, but oh-so effective, trick that makes this story a minor locked room classic.

"The Magic Lovers Case" can be found in volume 20 and brings Conan to a snowbound lodge, where an online group of magic enthusiasts have gathered, but dark magic seems to be at work when a member of the group is murdered under apparently impossible circumstances. His body is found outside the lodge, sprawled in the middle of a field of snow, which is virginal and unbroken without a single footprint going to, or coming from, the body.

In my opinion, the no-footprints scenario is the trickiest and most difficult of all impossible crimes to do successfully, because the physical nature of these tricks eliminates misdirection from the equation in most cases and admired Aoyama's unique approach to the problem – a very technical and elaborate trick. These complex tricks work admirably well in the comic book format, because you're shown had it was done.

The next story, "The Detective Koshien Case," is spread out over two volumes, 54 and 55, which is somewhat of a landmark story in the series.

Conan Edogawa and Harley Hartwell travel to an abandoned house, on a deserted island, to take part in a reality TV special about the "Teen Detectives" of Japan. The participants are the high-school detectives of the North and South, Yunya Tokitsu and Natsuki Koshimizu. Harley Hartwell represents the West and Jimmy Kudo the East, but, since he's there as Conan Edogawa, his place is taken by Saguru Hakuba – who previously appeared in volume 30. This reality show becomes a deadly game when one of the detectives, Tokitsu, is bludgeoned to death in an upstairs room of the abandoned house with the door and windows locked or fastened from the inside.

Granted, the solution reworks an old locked room-trick, but it was a skillfully done job and the whole story felt like a big deal with a strong crossover vibe. And the story has one of the most memorable and likable murderers in the series.

Finally, the list appropriately closes with my favorite impossible crime story, "The Poisonous Coffee Case," which can be found in volume 60. A melancholic, character-driven locked room story with a dark, rainy and noir-ish atmosphere. An immoral TV executive, Raisaku Nakame, is poisoned behind the chain-locked door of his top-floor condo. Evidence at the scene, such as coffee stains, suggests someone else had been in the room after he had died. But how did this person manage to get away?

The original solution to the impossible poisoning is superb and a heart breaker. A genuinely sad story and one of the best stories in the entire series. If you read only one Detective Conan story in your life, it should be this one.

And that brings this filler-post to an end. I want to return to a regular, novel-length detective story for my next read, but might do one more multiple short story review. So... stay tuned to find out.

Yokai Attack: Case Closed, vol. 69 by Gosho Aoyama

In my previous post, I reviewed a short story by Rintaro Norizuki, "Toshi densetsu pazuru" ("An Urban Legend Puzzle," 2001), which cleverly used the popularity of urban legends as a premise for a good, old-fashioned detective story, but Japan is home to much older, often more rural legends of monsters, spirits and demons – commonly known as yokai. The legend of the single most famous yokai in Japan is at the heart of a Detective Conan story.

The 69th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, published in most countries as Detective Conan, opens with Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan traveling to the Kora Inn, in the village of Kuchibashi in Gunma, to meet with a client.

Moore had received a letter alluding to a murder that had happened there 11 years ago and asked him to use his "remarkable deduction skills" to the clear the name of the writer, which was signed Mika Tatezato. However, the local police told Moore that there was no murder in that village 11 years ago. Mika Tatezato is not a name that figures on their wanted list.

As to be expected, Moore's client no-shows their appointment and it appears he has fallen for a very unfunny prank, but along the way, they learn a child was drowned in the river and the police concluded that the boy got his foot stuck between some rocks along the riverbank – before drowning in a flash flood. But why was the boy playing in the water in January? More interestingly, the region is rife with legends of the Kappa, "water monsters that lure the unwary," of which there was a rash of sightings 12 or 13 years ago. Rachel even spots one near the riverbank on their first day in the village.

On the following morning, the father of the boy and inn keeper is found dead in a dimly lit attic room overlooking the river. His body was drenched in "a putrid fishy-smelling liquid." As if the Kappa had grabbed him and "dragged him into the depths of a swamp."

This is an excellent story that was very reminiscent of Gladys Mitchell's Death and the Maiden (1947), in which two young boys are drowned in a river following sightings of naiads (water nymphs), but Aoyama crafted a much tighter plot. The central puzzle of how the putrid water was brought from the swamp to the attic can be classed as a quasi-impossible situation, but here the trick is used to establish an unusual kind of alibi. My only complaint is that the murderer telegraphed his identity to the reader practically from the start. However, this was more than made up with the tragically misunderstood motive and sad ending. An excellent story with good atmosphere and back-story. Easily the best story in this volume.

The second story brings Doc Agasa, Conan, Anita and the Junior Detective League to a hot spring resort. Doc Agasa has invented a gadget for the owner of the hot springs, but lately, it has been malfunctioning and he has been asked to repair it. So he brought along the kids.

At the resort, they find out that the hot springs is used by a film crew to shoot a remake of the greatest movie in The Bloodsteam Hitman franchise, The Crimson Spring-Head, which is about a hitman who works at a hot spring and in the movie he "creates a perfect locked room murder" – solution to this fictional murder is briefly used as a false solution. Unsurprisingly, the screenwriter is murdered in one of the hot springs, but these are lake-top hot springs and you can only reach the pavilions by crossing a bridge. Nobody crossed between the time the victim entered, early in the morning, and when the body was found. It's a locked room murder on a lake!

This is another good story with a solid plot, but, sort of, figured out the plot. However, I was only able to do this because the locked room situation was very reminiscent of an obscure, little-known impossible crime novel from the 1950s. I doubt Aoyama has read the book, but I thought the similarities were still interesting.

The third story is an inverted mystery in which Hoshie Urai plots to murder her husband, Taruto Urai, who are president and vice-president of Urai Confections. He's specialized sweet candies and she's specialized in sour, which she uses to poison him during party and gave herself an unshakable alibi. Unfortunately, Richard Moore starred in a commercial for their Spy Chocolate White, "an ultra-sour white chocolate," which landed him an invitation to the party, along with Conan and Rachel – who is promptly used by Hoshie to cement her alibi. You'll never be able to figure out the poisoning-trick, because it requires a specialized piece of knowledge. One part of the trick could potentially have killed the murderer. Cyanide is not something you want to have on your skin.

On a whole, a pretty decent, but not especially good, detective story. This series has had better stories and two of them preceded this one.

The last two chapters begin a story that will be concluded in the next volume and has Conan, Anita and the Junior Detective League a dark, empty house filled with fragments of mysterious piano music. And diary entries hinting that a murder has taken place.

All in all, this was a great volume opening with the beautifully-done Kappa story followed by a good locked room mystery and a passable inverted mystery. Ending with the promise of another good story. So I was very satisfied.

Kirin's Horn: Case Closed, vol. 68 by Gosho Aoyama

The 68th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, published in the non-English speaking world as Detective Conan, begins with the final chapter of the story that closed the previous volume and has one of those which-of-the-three setups littering the series, but here it was poorly executed with a painfully obvious solution – resulting in an incredibly mediocre story. Luckily, the next two stories are much better.

The plot of the second story centers on another ill-fated attempt by Rachel to get her estranged parents, Richard Moore and Eva Kaden, back together and the birthday of her mother provides her with an opportunity. Rachel has won a weekend getaway at the Shizuoka Seaside Hotel, which is a perfect location for a small, intimate birthday party, but the series murder-magnet, Conan, tagged along with Rachel, Richard and Eva. So a murder interrupting the birthday party is a question of when, not if.

Eva Kaden is a busy, successful attorney at law and had to reschedule an important meeting to the hotel where she was having her birthday party.

Kaden's client are a former model, Akiho Kokubu, who has been the victim of a stalker and her husband, Takehiko Kokubu. Their appointment was to arrange an out-of-court settlement with the mother of the man who was stalking her, all of whom are in the hotel, but, before their scheduled meeting can take place, Akiho's body "appeared out of nowhere" in Kaden's hotel room when she was taking a shower – which is patently impossible. The hotel room has a door that can only be opened with a key card and has a small window without a balcony. So how did the murderer enter or leave the locked room?

The problem of the locked room is practically immediately solved, but this answer reveals a second problem hiding underneath it. How could the murderer have carried out a certain task requiring two, or more, people? One of the clues gave me an idea how this could have been done, but failed to completely envision the trick before it was revealed. So a good, richly clued story with a sugary ending.

The third story marks the return of my favorite recurring side-character, Jirokichi Sebastian, who's Serena Sebastian's rich uncle and sworn nemesis of that infamously elusive thief, Kaito KID. Jirokichi has attempted to capture KID numerous times, such as in volumes 44, 61 and 65, but it was Conan who, time and time again, prevented KID from getting away with a valuable object – something that gave the old man an idea. Jirokichi has gotten the traditional warning note from KID promising that, when the moon is full, he'll appear again "to take the Kirin's Horn," but this time he had added a post-script. A post-script asking Jirokichi to "put aside childish things" and "settle this like men."

Jirokichi deduces from this that he wants adults present, not children, because "children are Kaito KID's weakness." After all, not even a master of disguise, like KID, can pass himself off as a child. So he places Conan and the Junior Detective League in the limelight. Admittedly, this was certainly the most original way to shoehorn them into a case without them just being there. Conan remained surprisingly cool-headed in the face of all those rollings news camera considering that it could blow his cover wide open. Anita at least pulled her hoodie over her head, but Conan like a deer in the headlights.

Anyway, the Kirin's Horn is "a rare piece of amber" containing "a seed that's ten of thousands of years old," which was recently discovered in a shrine constructed by the devilishly ingenious 19th century craftsman, Kichiemon Samizu – whose "tricky devises" has given Conan and KID hard times on several occasions. However, the presence of his long-dead hand, sort of, gave away the mechanics of the plot.

Nevertheless, the impossible situation that emerged from this setup was an intriguing one: the Kirin's Horn is part of a statue, well hidden inside a mechanical pillar, which stands in the middle of a small room with four differently colored pedestals in each corner. All of these pedestals have keyholes and the four colored keys have to be turned at the exactly the same time to make the statue inside the pillar appear. Jirokichi ordered an electrical current to be placed on the pedestals and placed members of the Junior Detective League in front of the keyholes. Finally, Jirokichi nailed the keys into the wall with a big staple.

Well, in spite of all the security measures, the lights go out as predicted and it takes KID only a minute to steal the horn, but he has a problem, because the trap is sprung and he's trapped inside the shrine – along with the police, a film crew and Jirokichi. Uncharacteristically, KID has taken Conan out with a taser and spends most of the story lying in the middle of the room, like John Kramer, but why?

Seriously, I began to suspect KID had gotten his hands on some short-term APTX 4869 and had taken Conan's place, which would be perfectly acceptable within this universe and this would explain why Anita and Conan acted differently towards the news cameras. You know, KID would look practically identical to Conan as a child. Luckily, this turned out not to be the case and the explanation showed a little but more ingenuity. The locked room trick is mainly a mechanical one, which is hardly a spoiler, but still required enough subterfuge and manipulation of the situation to not make the mechanical aspect feel like a cop-out.

As a bonus, KID gives the reader a second locked room mystery when he appears to be trapped, but simply vanishes when the lights go out for a second or two! The solution is very comic book-like, but have come across it before in a short story and admired the skillfully placed red herring that made it very easy to overlook the solution.

Admittedly, this is far from the best story with either Jirokichi, KID or the lingering presence of Kichiemon Samizu, but still found this to be a wonderfully imagined, cleverly constructed and enjoyable story.

Regrettably, this volume is book-ended by two incredibly mediocre stories and the final story deals with a purse snatcher, disguised in a goofy-looking Hyottoko mask, who targets tori-no-ichi markets and his latest victim is Rachel's best friend, Serena Sebastian – who's determined to get revenge. So they're present when the purse snatcher wounds a man with knife and the victim, before losing conscious, gives Conan a cryptic, near-death-message. However, Western readers rarely have a shot solving the codes or dying messages in this, because they nearly impossible to translate. And this story is no different. So that probably detracted something from this pretty average, uninspired which-of-the-three detective story.

All in all, this was a fairly balanced volume with weak stories opening and closing this collection, but wedged in between you'll find two solid cases and one of them has appearances of some of my favorite recurring side-characters. And those two stories were more than enough to leave me satisfied.