Reconstructive Nostalgia: Q.E.D. vol. 17-18 by Motohiro Katou

"Disaster of a Disastrous Man" is the first of two stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 17 and marks the return of the CEO of Alansoft, Alan Blade, who previously appeared in vol. 13 to force the teenage detective, Sou Touma, to partake in an April Fools' Day Challenge – a potentially life changing challenge with high stakes. If he had lost the challenge, Touma had to renounce his Japanese citizenship and come to America as Blade's employee. Touma won the battle-of-wits handily, but the software giant has been scheming and plotting ever since. And he seems to have hit on a failure-proof plan to ensnare Touma in his corporate empire. 

Alan Blade's birthday is coming up and hatches a plan with his personal secretary, Ellie Francis, to invite "the people who refused an offer in the company" to his summerhouse on a private island. There he will offer each guest a million dollars cash to come and work for Alansoft, which they will likely refuse. So the plan is to make his guests indebted to his company by having Ellie steal the money from their beach huts.

Sou Touma receives an invitation as well as his friend and MIT student, Syd "Loki" Green. Touma and Loki brought along Kana Mizuhara and Eva Scott. The third to receive an invitation used to "a world-famous hacker," Elliott Webb, who was caught by the FBI and put on probation, but the person who helped the FBI catch Webb was a software magnate, Liu Han – a man who was "once called the pioneer of the computer world." Liu Han was one of the founders of "the famous Grape Computer Enterprise," but Alansoft drove the company out of business and reduced the pioneer to managing a small software company as he refused to work for Blade. Han got the fourth and last invitation. So the plan is set in motion as the four suitcases with a million dollars a piece, one by one, begin to disappear from the beach huts, but it appears someone took the suitcases before Ellie could get to them. They searched everywhere, but the money appears to have vanished without a trace from a tiny island with only eight people on it.

This story and its central puzzle would probably provoke a discussion on whether it's a closed-circle situation or a locked room mystery/impossible crime. Katou kind of presented the story as an impossible crime, but it really is only a closed-circle as the suitcases could be hidden in several places that were never considered. They could have been hidden on the roofs of the hut, buried on the beach or sealed in weighted, waterproof bags and submerged into the bay of the crescent-shaped island. So more of how-was-it-done with an interesting, but risky, solution which could have easily misfired by either a rush of irrationality or a spot of honesty. However, the ending will make every plot purist and stickler for fair play crack a smile. All in all, not a bad story.

The second story from this volume, "Black Nightshade," has Inspector Mizuhara acting as a security guard/paparazzi regulator on a film set as personal request from "the giant of Japanese cinema," Director Oosawa Kazumasa. Kana Mizuhara and Sou Touma have backstage access and witness the filming of the scene in which the lead actress, Kurokawa Misa, stabs the male lead, Nangou Haruhiko, but the prop knife with a retractable blade turned out to be very real – killing him practically instantly as she plunged the knife into his body. So who could have swapped the prop knife for a real one and why? Nangou Haruhiko was known as "an extreme womanizer" whose name is attached to many incidents, but Kana (doing the legwork) learns that the mysterious actor was also known as a really nice guy and even his conquests didn't have a bad word to say about him. And then the case takes an unexpected, dramatic turn when the apparent murderer commits suicide. But the keyword there is apparently as it's really a murder presenting both Sou and the reader with a highly original locked room puzzle.

There's a small, high-walled makeshift prop-room with an open ceiling on the studio lot put together with some worn out plywood from the set, which has one door that can be blocked-shut from the inside with a table. The supposed murderer has locked himself inside that windowless prop-room and the thin walls, while very high, can't support the weight of an adult trying to climb over it. Sou Touma is the shortest and lightest person present and has go over the plywood wall to unblock the door. What they find inside is a body with his throat cut and a suicide note. The locked room-trick has a simplistic brilliance to it, but the answer to the rice cooker clue is probably beyond the comprehension of most readers. Still a very clever piece of plotting with a locked room-trick on par with the best impossible crime stories by Edward D. Hoch. Let's not forget about the first murder, which is not too difficult to solve, but the strange motivation and distraction used to swap the knives makes it stand out. An unusual, but effective, detective story and ends the volume on a high note.

The first of two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 18, "Arrival of the Famous Detective(s)," is a case in point of the bizarre, sometimes downright experimental or quirky, but often original, detective stories you can find nowhere else – except in this series. This time, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara are reduced to mere background characters for most of the story. Only appearing at the beginning and end to setup and close the case. A case that followed around the three members of the Sakisaka Private High School Detective Club, Enari "Queen" Himeko, Nagaie "Holmes" Koroku and Morita "Mulder" Orisato, who try to be real-life detectives without much success. Even when a case happens in their own club room. Who ate the cheese cake that Queen had left behind in the club room for them to eat after classes were done for the day? They try to come up with explanations, but they are completely inapt as "Holmes" is incredibly bad at drawing deductions and "Mulder" simply wants to blame ghosts. And their investigation only uncovers more mysteries. Such as a ghostly image in one of the mirrors of the school bathroom and even a minor locked room mystery when the statuette of a cat dressed as Sherlock Holmes is knocked over in the locked club room. All of these smaller problems only get resolved when "Queen" notices she always sees Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara around when the incidents happened and decides to question them about it.

A pure, tongue-in-cheek parody with a simple, lightweight plot, but therefore not any less amusing and loved Nagaie's preposterous false-solution to the locked room problem. Suggesting the culprit had hammered out a hole next to the locked door of the club room, locking the door after he was finished and repaired the wall like it was new ("it is but a simple trick"). Another fun bit of trivia is that the opening revealed Sou is as a tone deaf as Conan Edogawa from Case Closed.

The second and last story to close out the volume, "Three Birds," is another perfect example of the series straying not only from the conventions of the shin honkaku-style, anime-and manga detectives, but the traditional detective story in general. I should hated "Three Birds" as it's the complete opposite of what I want to find in my detective fiction, but loved this nostalgia-driven, psychological crime drama.

 

Detective Sasazuka is a colleague of Kana Mizuhara's father, Inspector Mizuhara, who hears on the news the skeleton remains of a man and woman were discovered in the mountains of Y City, T Prefecture, which is his hometown – skeletons were found close to place where he used to play. Sasazuka had a secret tree-hut where he hang out with two childhood friends, but the discovery of the remains coincide with a reunion of the three friends and Sasazuka makes a discovery of his own. There are worrying gaps in his childhood memories like not being able to remember he had an expensive toy pistol, but has it anything to do with the remains of the two people who apparently committed suicide thirteen years ago? The story is interspersed with an illustrated children's story about three bird friends and gold coin who lived at the peak of a tree. This is such weird, but effective story with the ending laying bare some genuine crimes. Or, to be more precise, criminal and moral misdeeds, but not the ones you might expect. Once more, the series produces an atypical, but original, crime/detective story with the problem of Sasazuka's memory having something new to offer (ROT13: gur phycevg gelvat gb genafsre uvf gebhoyrq zrzbevrf ba gb uvz). So never let it be said again I only care about plot and tricks!

On a whole, Q.E.D. vol. 17 and 18 were both splendid with either strong or simply entertaining stories which represented the reader with the best the series has to offer. Surprisingly, "Three Birds" ended up stealing the show, which is not going to do my reputation as the resident locked room fanboy any good, but let the record show I fanboyed over the impossible crime from "Black Nightshade." Anyway, Q.E.D. deserves more appreciation and attention.

The Forbidden Fruit: Case Closed, vol. 80 by Gosho Aoyama

The 80th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, a.k.a. Detective Conan, begins with the conclusion of the headline act of the previous volume, "Vampire's Mansion," but ended my review with the hope that the concluding chapter would pull everything together in the end – as it had been uncommonly poor story up to that point. There were too many cheap, second-rate tricks and the murderer too easily identified, but the elaborate, fleshed-out explanation gave the plot some much needed polish. Overall, it elevated the story from uncharacteristically poor to passable. There is, however, not enough plot-polish to cover up how hilariously stupid the solution to the last impossibility looks on paper. Things pick up with the next story. 

The second story begins with the Junior Detective League playing soccer when their game is interrupted by a wandering, extremely pettable, stray cat. Conan recognizes the cat as the stray, named Cappy, who hangs around the neighborhood of Richard Moore's office and is fed by the waitress of Coffee Poirot. She named him Captain, or Cappy, after Captain Hastings. But, as Cappy runs off, a thread from Anita hand-knit sweater is caught in its claws and they have to run after him before her entire sweater unravels. Conan and the Junior Detective League follow the cat inside a refrigerated food delivery truck, but they get locked inside and, as the two delivery men continue their route, they make a gruesome discovery among the undelivered packages.

Conan overheard one of the delivery men saying that they "need the alibi to stick" and discovers the body of a man inside an unmarked, cardboard box with crushed, dirty edges and sides – suggesting the box has been rolled around "to keep the body from developing livor mortis." So they caught the delivery men in the act of fabricating an incontestable alibi, but now they're locked inside a refrigerator on wheels and not everyone is warmly dressed. And every delivery made leaves them with less room to hide. Conan has to play MacGyver to put together a (coded) message, get the message out of the truck and hope it finds its way to the correct person before they're either discovered or the cold takes it toll. A splendid concoction of the inverted detective story, the time-ticking thriller and a dash of code cracking, but agree with Ho-Ling that the escape plan only works in-universe "where there are genius detectives all over town." Still a very well done and entertaining story. And liked how pure chance mercilessly obliterated what could have been a perfect crime.

Curiously, the third story also concerns the delivery of food, but here it results in a bizarrely-staged impossible crime instead of a cast-iron alibi. Richard Moore chaperons Conan, Rachel, Serena and Sera to the tapping of a competitive cooking show. A main feature of the show is the closely guarded mystery fruit. On each episode, a huge, double-padlocked iron chest is brought on stage and the contestants have to make something on the stop with the mystery fruit. There's a complicated, old-world encryption system with physical keys to ensure "not even the staff knows what that night's fruit will be until the iron chest is opened." A food service picks the fruit and packs the chest, which is secured with a padlock and send to the TV studio. The producer puts a second padlock on it and sends it back to the food service to have the first padlock removed, which is then returned again to the TV studio. So only the food service knows what kind of fruit is inside the iron chest until its opened.

During the taping, the host opens the iron chest with the producer's key and inside, stuffed among the apples, is the body of food critic and judge on the show. Shotoku Takeki was a severe judge who suspected the winner of the previous six episodes, Chef Shuhei Kurimura, of cheating as he always had the perfect dish ready to go with the mystery fruit. But how could he have known? And how did the body end up in the locked chest? The keys were hard-to-duplicate and "the padlock is alarmed to deter lockpicks," which eliminated the palming-and-swapping usually found in locked room mysteries involving padlocks. Aoyama came up with a genuinely original solution which has a simplicity that nicely contrasted with the complicated setup, but you need to make an inspired guess, or imaginative leap, to get the very late hair-clue and figure out the locked room-trick. That being said, the evidence that's the murderer's undoing is kind of brilliant and disgusting at the same time.

The fourth story focuses on the two female officers of the Traffic Department, Yumi Miyamoto and Neako Miike, who were talking about the former's ex-boyfriend when the latter receives a call from a friend, Sakurako Yonehara – who previously appeared in the optical illusion case from vol. 74 and vol. 75. She works as a housekeeper at the Chateau Baker Condos where she discovered a body, which is where Yumi's ex lives. The victim is, in fact, his next door neighbor, Mrs. Chiyoko Itami, who was found with an arm in a sling hanging from a light fixture in the living room. She had a domestic altercation with her husband, Naganobu Itami, who turned up with a black eye, but everyone with a key to the house have alibis. A spare key is kept in a mailbox with a combination lock on the first floor and the only outsider who knows the combination is Yumi's ex-boyfriend, Shukichi Haneda.

Conan and the Junior Detective League happened to overhear the phone call, scrambled to the condo and crawled all over the crime scene like ants on a picnic blanket, but the story obviously meant to introduce Shukichi Haneda as a new recurring character. This plot-thread is what gave the volume its shogi-themed cover. However, while a fairly minor story, the alibi-trick here is not without interest. I really liked how Aoyama combined something very modern and up-to-date (n fznegcubar) with a related item that's hopelessly outdated and obsolete (n cnlcubar) to create something new and novel.

The last chapter opens a story that will be concluded in vol. 81, but the premise is already full of intrigue and promise. Conan meets with Jodie Sterling in a public park during the Flower Viewing Festival to brief her what happened on the Mystery Train (vol. 78) and what he learned. But they keep being interrupted. Firstly, there's someone who recognizes Jodie from the bank robbery hostage case (vol. 65) and he drops a small bombshell on them. Secondly, a woman begins to scream that someone had stuck a hand in her bag and that there's a pickpocket. A few minutes later, Doc Agasa calls Conan to say he just witnessed a murder in the park!

So, all in all, a pretty good and solid volume with all the complete stories nicely balancing the ongoing, character-driven story-arcs with cleverly constructed, often original plots showing how to incorporate today's world in traditionally-styled detective stories. Very much looking forward to the next volume!

A Scratch in Time: Q.E.D. vol. 15-16 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 15 comprises of the usual two novella-length stories with the opening story, entitled "Glass Room," presenting the reader with one of the series more conventional, but deviously plotted, stories which has everything from an impossible crime (of sorts) to a whole host of those pesky alibis – except "this locked room destroys alibis." The story takes place during the last week of December and, if my memory of the series timeline serves me correctly, it's the last week of 2001. 

December is shiwasu in Japan and "shiwasu means a big cleanup day" to start the new year with a clean house and soul, which is why Sou Touma is helping Kana Mizuhara cleaning out her house. Mizuhara comes across a CD she borrowed six months ago from a classmate, Oya Natsumi, but she forgot to give it back. Touma reminds her it's the time of year to return all the stuff you have borrowed, but, when they arrive at the home of their classmate, Inspector Mizuhara is there with the family. Not without reason. Natsumi tells them her grandfather has been murdered!

Oya Etsuro was a man of leisure and an audiophile who dedicated all of his attention and resources to his hobby. Etsuro has his own workshop where he builds his own, old-fashioned amplifiers with vacuum tube bulbs, which produce better sound, but "the number of usable vacuum tube bulbs is decreasing" and "a rare vacuum tube can cost more than 100,000 yen" – ensuring the hobby is an expensive one. Etsuro is found one day in his workshop with a knife plunged into his side and he had three visitors that day, but they all possess unassailable alibis. Etsuro's struggling daughter-in-law, Oya Toyoko, made her weekly visit to bring him a bunto lunchbox. Wakabayashi Yoshikatsu is the president of the Health Foods Marketing Company and came to give Etsuro (who's an investor) a management report. Yamauchi Isao is fellow hobbyist and warned Etsuro that, "sooner or later," he's going to pay for living it up while his family were struggling with a recession. However, they were all seen leaving the premise by the housekeeper, Ogawa Shouko, who was knitting outside the workshop door when Etsuro was still alive. So who murdered this strange and selfish man and how?

The strength of this story is in its denouement as Sou Touma eliminates all of the suspects and every possible way the murderer could have entered, or exited, the workshop. Only to start all over again from scratch in order to demonstrate "there is a third entrance" that completely obliterates the murderer's otherwise unshakable alibi. Touma produces a one-of-a-kind piece of evidence the murderer unwittingly left behind in the flow of time. Punctuating his explanation with cracking the dead man's riddle promising "a present for someone that understands his hobby." A neatly done piece of visual code cracking that only works in a visual medium like comic books or TV.

So, plot-wise, "Glass Room" is a highlight of the series with the third, practically invisible entrance immediately inviting a comparison with Carter Dickson's The Judas Window (1938) and Arthur Porges' "The Unguarded Path" (collected in These Daisies Told, 2018), but putting the locked room mystery to work to craft a perfect alibi makes it closer to the stories in Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Red Locked Room (2020). Either way, it's a fantastic, neo-classical detective story.

The second story, "Dedekind Cut," brings the focus back on the series-characters as it explores another, unresolved episode from Touma's time as a 10-year-old prodigy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in America. At the time, Hilbert Dorn, Professor of Mathematics, had an extremely intelligent and arrogant assistant, John Toll. Professor Dorn and Toll never got along very well, but the professor was forced to terminate Toll's position when he caught him altering a paper on his computer, which is where the incident would have ended – only it appears Toll began to mentally torture the professor. Professor Dorn's constantly finds his office ransacked or items smashed to pieces. Even when the locks were changed, the incidents continued with everything locked up and no signs of forced entry. So the professor asks Touma to be his witness and give evidence in court of what John Toll has done to him, but Touma flat out refuses to do this. Saying that the whole problem is like "a Dedekind cut" (a mathematical "concept that rational and irrational numbers can be cut from a real number line").

Several years later, Professor Dorn travels with Syd "Loki" Green to Japan to ask Touma to finally explain why his problem is like the Dedekind cut. Yes, the story include pages that will give some readers traumatic flashbacks of their math homework, but you can be mathematically illiterate and still piece together the solution. A rather sad solution firmly grounded in the personalities of the characters (Dorn, Toll and Touma) with all the clues fairly on display. So a relatively minor entry in the series, but a good example of a compelling, character-driven detective story.

The 16th volume of Q.E.D. opens with "Sakura, Sakura" and takes place against the preparations of the Flower Viewing Festival in Sakisaka Park. Kana Mizuhara is the class manager in charge of the preparations, but a dark cloud drifts over the preparations when a third-year student, Minegishi, enters the classroom to ask Mizuhara is going out with Touma. Mizuhara vigorously denied it and learns Touma is unable to help her with preparing the flower viewing. Something involving his future and Minegishi. So another character-driven story exploring and fleshing out the two protagonists, but the story comes with three (locked room) mini-puzzles that need to be solved.

So, while in the park, Mizuhara meets three people from a nearby company, but they all have lost something that could potentially spell trouble for them. Two employees lost an important document in the copying room ("it just disappeared in front of our eyes"), which has a very easy and solvable answer. The third employee lost a wedding ring and provides the story with a second locked room-puzzle. Matsushima Shinsuke is kind of the office clown of the company and claimed to "have night vision even at night," which he did to trick his colleagues into making a losing bet. Shinsuke told them to write something on a piece of paper, put it inside a sealed envelope and he would read it in the windowless, pitch-black document room – which has the light switch on the outside. And he did it! A really fun little locked room-trick that becomes even better once you know how it was done, because the premise feels cheap in comparison with the solution.

However, these are merely mini-puzzles with the story really revolving around the undefined relationship between the two protagonists, particularly Touma, as it's implied "someone like that shouldn't be in our world forever" and how "he's definitely going to disappear one day" – like cherry blossoms "he'll fall at some point." So, on a whole, a good and evenly balanced story, but shows Q.E.D. is a series you have to read in order. By the way, the balancing act between the emotional and intellectual is a red thread running through all the characters and stories in this series.

Regrettably, the second and last story, entitled "A Corpse's Tear," ends this volume on a disappointing note, but the story began promising enough with Inspector Mizuhara taking his daughter and Touma on a fishing holiday in the mountains. They are staying with an old friend of the inspector, Ooshiro Yoshirou, who asks the policeman to look at a letter he received. A girl he knew from high school, Awata Ryouko, wrote him to say she fears her violent husband is going to kill her. Next thing they learn is that she's apparently ran away from her husband, but the search for a missing person eventually becomes a murder case and a hasty arrest is made. But did this person really do it? Touma has to answer that question by discovering the place where the body had been hidden before it was discovered. Admittedly, the trick was clever, but something the reader has not been prepared to deal with because it took so long for the body to be found. A seasoned mystery reader can probably make an educated guess where the body could have been hidden, but not really fair in already plain and unremarkable story. You have to expect these kind of duds in a series casting such a large, wide net in a variety of (back) waters of the genre. Some of those waters were previously unexplored.

So, all in all, volume 15 evidently is the stronger of the two volumes with a traditionally-styled, tightly plotted locked room problem and a very well handled and compelling piece of character-building, which is a trick the opening story of volume 16 tried to repeat. But the collection of mini-puzzles stole the show there. Unfortunately, the last story is as unimpressive as it was disappointing, but, on balance, they more than justified my long overdue return to Q.E.D. I'm going to try to double-review my way through the series in 2022 and try the first two volumes of C.M.B. To be continued...

New Murders for Old: Case Closed, vol. 79 by Gosho Aoyama

The 79th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, published outside of the English-speaking world as Detective Conan, has some big shoes to fill coming right after the ambitious, multi-layered and massive "Mystery Train" story from vol. 78 combining a classically-styled, railroad detective story with a character-driven thriller – cleverly putting the series' cast of recurring characters to good use. In the last chapter of that volume the groundwork was laid for another Kaitou KID heist of the impossible variety! 

Jirokichi Sebastian is one of my favorite recurring characters, a wealthy, semi-retired CEO of a financial company and adventurer, who has become embroiled in a very public rivalry with the modern-day Arsène Lupin. So now he uses his personal fortune to purchase rare artifacts, gems and elaborate traps to lure and ultimately capture Kaitou KID, which makes him the perfect antagonist for that playful antihero. It's like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Road Runner, but the traps are baited with precious gems and KID escaping from them usually present an impossible situation.

As stated in the previous volume, Jirokichi "never misses a chance to exhibit a gem that might attract the Kaitou KID" and his latest acquisition is a pendant with a red diamond, the Blushing Diamond, which is fastened to the shell of a turtle – named Poseidon. Jirokichi went through great lengths to protect both the turtle and the diamond that's attached to its shell. The aquarium at the exhibit is constructed out of shatter-proof glass and impenetrable wire netting on the top and sides, but the Moonlight Magician kept his word and made the diamond disappear as if by magic. Leaving behind a sealed, but empty, aquarium and a note saying, "the shy mermaid has dissolved into foam in my hand."

These Kaitou KID heists tend to be visual spectacles that handily exploit the comic book format to get away with tricks that would be hard to pull off in prose. Such as his miraculous mid-air walk (vol. 44) or his astonishing transportation-trick (vol. 61), which still succeeded in not being wholly implausible. By comparison, the theft of the turtle and diamond felt very contrived and unconvincing. However, the impossible crime turned out to play second fiddle to the solution revealing a cleverly done inversion of the Jirokichi vs. KID story format. So my impression is that the impossible theft was plotted around that inversion, but it undoubtedly improved an otherwise average KID story with his mistake being the proverbial cherry on top. I liked that there was a large crowd of Kaitou KID fans in front of the exhibition erupting in celebration to the news that "THE KID GOT THE GEM!!"

Speaking of playing second fiddle, the third, vampire-themed story is the headline act of this volume, but the second story, "The Unlocked Locked-Room Murder," should be considered a landmark of the contemporary-traditional detective story. A story that broke new ground with a rough, unpolished idea demonstrating the 21st century has fresh opportunities, not obstacles, to offer to every mystery writers who knows how to plot.

This original piece of detective fiction begins conventionally enough with Harley and Kazuha accompanying Inspector Torotaki, of the Osaka Police, to Tokyo to help investigate a suspicious death, but before picking up Conan at Richard Moore's office – because Harley suspects Conan might be interested in the "outta-reach locked-room murder." A schoolteacher, Hidemichi Mizuki, came to the attention of the police and they place his Tokyo condo under observation, but, on the third day, he failed to come outside for his daily walk. So they decided to enter the house and found his body hanging from a rope in the living room, but the gap between the dangling feet and seat of the chair suggests it could have been murder. But "how could the killer get in and out without being spotted by the cops?"

Harley, Kazuha, Torotaki, Richard, Rachel and Conan (yes, the whole group) travel to the condo to hunt for clues, but Harley becomes disappointed when evidence clearly points towards suicide. So a potentially interesting and tough case was cruelly snatched away from under his nose, but then something unexpectedly happens. When the elevator comes up to their floor, a man is standing inside with a gun trained to his temple and he pulls the trigger in front of their eyes. The doors close again and briefly goes up before coming down again. The doors open to reveal the body of the man lying inside and the word "GOODBYE" scrawled on the inside doors. Whatever trick you think was used, you're wrong. This is not the kind of detective story you can solve by relying solely on your knowledge of detective stories. Aoyama came up with something completely new that can only be described as some straight up reality manipulation. More can be done with this idea, but the execution of it needs a little more fine-tuning and polish.

So this brings us to that previously mentioned headline act that covers the last seven chapters and will be concluded in the next volume, but it better be good, because have been impressed with the story thus far. Conan, Rachel, Harley and Torotaki tag along with Inspector Torotaki to an old-fashioned manor house in the manor. Six months ago, the body of the maid was found in the surrounding forest, "strung upside down from a stake," whose only injury was "a pair of small punctures in her neck" and locals suspected the owner of the manor, Hakuya Torakura – who turned out to have a rock-solid alibi. But lately, he also adopted all the characteristics of a vampire. He sleeps during the day in a coffin, threw out the priceless family silver and told the cook never to use garlic ever again. Inspector Torotaki is asked to look into this case again as favor to his chief (Harley's father).

Upon their arrival at the manor, they find a family of rivaling siblings and their partners who all have their eyes on inheriting the family fortune. It doesn't take very long before all hell breaks loose. Hakuya Torakura is found dead in his coffin with a stake driven through his heart, but the body inexplicably vanishes as if he turned into mist and disappeared. Just like a vampire. Torakura's figure reappears, "filmy and pale like a ghost," during a group photograph, but only Rachel and Kazuha spotted him. Until the photograph is developed. This is the last time his ghostly presence is both seen and felt. Not to mention several (impossible) murders and getting cut-off from the outside world.

Regrettably, the solution to the vanishing body and spirit photograph exposed some very cheap, second-rate tricks unworthy of this great series and already have a pretty good idea who's behind the murders. But that will be revealed in the next volume with a very late, as of yet unexplained impossibility might rescue the story from ending up being uncharactertically poor entry in the series. Fingers crossed!

So, on a whole, this volume distinguishes itself by toying with some fun and even groundbreaking ideas with only the execution of those ideas leaving something to be desired. The third story had potential, but has so far only disappointed me. That unfortunately makes for a very uneven volume. Particularly coming right after the volume that contained a series-classic. Still not a bad volume, all things considered, but that vampire murder case really dragged down the overall quality.

The Kindaichi Case Files: Ghost Fire Island Murder Case

Back in August, I reviewed the last of four translated "light novels" in The Kindaichi Case Files series, written by Seimaru Amagi, which ended my exploration of that part of the franchise as the rest of the often promising-sounding novels remain frustratingly untranslated – like Yūrei kyakusen satsujin jiken (Ghost Passenger Ship Murder Case, 1995) and Onibijima satusjin jiken (Ghost Fire Island Murder Case, 1997). I considered to get to the third Opera House case or the new 37-year-old Kindaichi next, but an anonymous comment directed my attention to the anime adaptation of Ghost Fire Island Murder Case. Saying it's "one of the most underrated and overlooked mysteries in the series" that "received the greatest improvement in its anime adaptation" compared to the novel. So why not? It's been a while since I visited the anime series. 

Ghost Fire Island Murder Case, alternatively titled The Murder Case of Will-o'-the-Wisp Island or The Will-o'-the-Wisp Isle Murder Case, originally aired as a four-episode story on Nippon TV between October 12 and November 2, 1998. So let's get started!

The story begins with Hajime Kindaichi being accompanied to the hospital by his childhood friend and hopeful love interest, Miyuki Nanase, to have a gastric examination when they spot a notice for a cram school/training camp for medical students – asking for part-time workers to help out over the summer course. Since they can use some pocket money, they sign up as part-time workers and travel to Eikou Hostel situated on a remote island in the South Sea of Japan.

Shiranui Island is rumored to be "a gathering place for wandering and revenge-taking spirits," where ghostly will-o'-the-wisps roam at night, but the hostel has ghosts of its own. The hostel used to be sanatorium in the past where tuberculosis patients were treated and has a dusty, unused room with "an interesting history," but there's also a more recent tragedy looming over the summer seminar. Following a previous trip to the island, a student attempted suicide and ended up in a coma. Now the students who were involved have returned to the island. And it doesn't take very long for things to go south!

On the first evening of their two-week stay, there's an annual midnight test of courage, which is intended to "make some good memories" before everyone begins cramming for exams, but it involves "a little ghost story" concerning the vacant room and an otherworldly entity – simply known as the Midnight's Evil Spirit. When the sanatorium was converted into a medical training camp, nobody was to use the Sarusuberi Room as it's "an intersection for wandering spirits of the dead." Ten years ago, a student committed suicide in that room after failing an exam and his ghost appears every year on the anniversary of his death. You can see his ghost hanging in the room with an eerie will-o'-the-wisp floating outside the window by peeking through the keyhole.

Kindaichi is new to the island and has to be first that night to look through the keyhole, but the grave image he sees is a little too realistic to be ghosts! What he sees is one of the students being hung by a figure, whose face is obscured by the darkness, dressed in a hospital gown and he even hears the rope creaking. But when the hostel manager opens the door with a spare key, the room is completely empty. There's dust on the windowsill and a connecting door was nailed shut years ago. So the manager wants to brush the incident away as over excited students imagining seeing ghosts, but one of the students is indeed missing. Their lines of communication to the outside world are destroyed, which effectively maroons them on the island for the next three days. Before they know it, they have two bodies on their hands with one of them found hanged from a very high beam in an abandoned church with a lack of footprints in the sand muddling the question of alibis.

So the story (mostly) adheres to the familiar formula of the series, but it's very noticeable the episodes were adapted from a novel instead of the usual manga (comic book), which came at the expense of the visual element of the plotting and clueing. There was more said in the episodes than shown. What it showed (blatantly) was no doubt easier to hide or slip by the reader in a novel, but here it gave away an important part of the solution. I believe one particular scene, early on in the story, would have been presented a little different to the reader had the story originally been written/drawn as a manga. For example (ROT13), vg jbhyq unir orra orggre unq Xvaqnvpuv'f zrqvpny rknzvangvba gnxra cynpr oruvaq pybfrq qbbef jvgu gur svore fpbcr bayl oevrsyl fubja ba fperra nf gur qbpgbe jnf gvqlvat hc. How it was done in the animation was too in your face.

Nonetheless, there are still some pretty good twists and turns to be found. Such as the excellent locked room-trick, which has a setup designed to arouse the suspicion of well-read, seasoned mystery readers – as we have seen these type of keyhole-tricks before. The moving figures, sound of rope being stretched and that peculiar thump suggested something different was at the back of this locked room. Amagi delivered with a completely new solution to the impossibly vanishing scene observed through a keyhole. The second murder has a less original, two-part answer (Qblyr'f Oveyfgbar Tnzovg naq n snxrq unatvat), but necessary as it served a very specific purpose. I thought the clue of the missing stepladder and its true meaning an inspired piece of plotting.

I've called Amagi the Soji Shimada of the anime-and manga detective story in previous reviews, specialized in majestic, grand-scale locked room mysteries and alibi-tricks, but the light novels demonstrated he could work on a much smaller scale. However, they did expose that he wrote his stories around the locked room and alibi-tricks to ensure everything was on hand without making it feel too contrived. Ikazuchi matsuri satsujin jiken (Deadly Thunder, 1998) is a perfect example of a story written around a plot like silly putty stretched over a classroom skeleton. It worked quite successfully in Deadly Thunder, but here it directed even more unwanted attention to the one thing that should have been subtly sneaked pass the reader/viewer. And, if you spot it, you can easily work out whodunit and what's going on with the second murder. But, on the upside, one of Amagi's drawbacks that crop in these original light novel cases worked splendidly here. Amagi has the tendency to go one twist too far with last-minute revelations about either the murderer or motive, which tend to be either pitch-black, or outright cruel, but here it gave the ending a genuinely tragic touch. I particularly liked where and how the murderer learned all those deadly tricks. You can't help but feel a pang of sympathy when you learn the precise motive.

So, yeah, a pretty mixed bag this time around. Ghost Fire Island Murder Case is, on a whole, a fairly standard Kindaichi tale with some good plot-ideas, but noticeably weaker visually. Saying more than it shows or showing more than it should. You can put that down to the anime adapting the story from a novel instead of a comic book. I'm sure everything worked better and is less obvious in its original form, which I very likely would have appreciated a little more than this adaptation. Sorry anonymous commentator.

The Crimes in Cabin B: Case Closed, vol. 78 by Gosho Aoyama

The 78th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, originally published as Detective Conan, which has the longest story since vol. 58 that was setup in the previous volume and covers seven chapters with the second, three-chapter story acting as its aftermath – while the last chapter sets the stage for the return of Kaitou KID. A return alluded to in the opening chapter as KID's long-time nemesis, Jirokichi Sebastian, announced he was planning to use the Mystery Train to exhibit "one of his rare gems." Somewhat of a baited trap, as usually, but more on that in a moment. 

The Bell Tree Express is the "Mystery Train," owned by the Sebastian Conglomerate, which hosts an annual murder mystery game with "no stops until the final destination." A "murderer" and "victim" are chosen at random from from among the guests with the other passengers playing detective and "try to solve the mystery before the train reaches the station."

Anita presented Conan with a Mystery Train Pass Ring in the previous volume to lay the groundwork for a truly special kind of detective story. A story that succeeded in being both a classically-plotted, baroque-style mystery with no less than two impossibilities and a character-driven thriller with a galore of recurring characters and some major plot developments.

Firstly, the murder mystery game begins early when Conan and the Junior Detective League receive a note telling them they've been selected as the detectives and to follow instructions, namely visiting "Cabin B of Carriage 7 in ten minutes," where they witness a shooting – turning the murder mystery into "a game of tag" with the fleeing assassin. But when they meet one of the conductors, he tells them the mystery game is scheduled to begin in about an hour. So they rush back to Cabin B, which is when they make a startling discovery. Carriage 7 has "disappeared from a moving train" along with the victim in Cabin B!

Conan only needs a handful of pages to solve the impossibility of the vanishing train carriage, but the reappearance of Cabin B presents him with another miraculous murder. This time, the victim is actually dead with a very real bullet in his head, but the cabin door was "chained shut" from the inside and the conductor in the corridor "didn't see anyone enter or leave the cabin." A seemingly impossible murder in Cabin B begs to be compared to John Dickson Carr, but the story is unmistakably a clever and warm tribute to Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934). There are many nods and winks to the story and Aoyama very effectively recreated a well-known scene for his own ends. Most amusing of all is Richard Moore badly imitating Hercule Poirot throughout the story and he barely broke character.

However, the story is not merely a lighthearted sendup of Christie's Murder on the Orient Express as the plot is quit good. The locked room-trick is a clever combination of simple trickery and elaborate misdirection strengthened by some good clues like the defective light above one of the cabin doors.

So the puzzle-side of the story is absolutely solid and a first-class specimen of the railway mystery, but there's a darker, parallel story taking place in the background involving a ton of recurring characters and agents of the Black Organization.

Black Organization received intelligence Anita, or "Sherry," is traveling on the Bell Tree Express, "a steel cell on wheels," which means the hunt is on and they intend to "flush her out like a deer" – catching a bullet as she leaps out. The opening pages revealed "Bourbon" is tasked with hunting down and eliminating Anita, but his, or her, identity has never been revealed. And, as to be expected, more than one familiar face has boarded the train who can all be the mysterious Bourbon. What follows is dangerous and explosive battle-of-wits crossed with a game of hide-and-seek, while Conan is busy investigating the impossible murder in Cabin B. A very well-done and handled piece of storytelling that not only added an extra dimension to the regular murder investigation, but furthered the ongoing story-arc and revealed the identity of Bourbon. My sole complaint is the surprise cameo, which pretty much was put to use as a deus ex machina. They were so lucky [REDACTED] decided to put in an appearance.

The second story is a strange and mixed bag of tricks, but not for the reasons you might think, because it's mostly a pretty decent detective story. The problem is that the various components don't "gel" together all that well.

A story best described as the aftermath of the previous case and "the Mystery Train was such a disaster" that "the Sebastian family decided to make up for it" and invited Richard Moore, Rachel and Conan to their villa in Izu – apparently famous for its tennis court. When they arrive, they find a group of college tennis players who use the court to practice and one of them gives Conan a light concussion with a flying tennis racket ("mada mada dane"). Bourbon is also there under the identity he was introduced to the reader. Conan is the only one who knows it. This seriously hampers his investigation when he wakes up in his room with a body blocking the inside the door, which places him smack in the middle of another locked room murder.

I liked the premise of Conan waking up in a locked room with a murder victim and the solution to the locked room found a new and original way to use an age-old trick. Something that has often been used for a very different type of impossible crime, but the premise and locked room-trick should have been two separate stories. I think it's a waste to not have used the premise for a story in which Conan is the only suspect. You can even have a never-before encountered police inspector who learns Conan has been involved in a ton of murder cases and begins to suspect he's a homicidal child. I don't think it helped the murderer stood out like sore thumb or that the plot played second fiddle to Bourbon looking over Conan's shoulder.

The last chapter sets the stage for another Kaitou KID heist, which was alluded to in the opening chapter, but Jirokichi Sebastian had to move the exhibit in the wake of the Mystery Train disaster. But the challenge to the master thief stands. KID already promised to steal the Blushing Mermaid on the opening night of the exhibition. Something that's easier said than done, because the pendant with a red diamond is stuck to the back of a turtle, named Poseidon, who swims in a large, bulletproof aquarium surrounded by twenty guards – which is as good as burglarproof. KID lives up to his reputation and stages a grand magic trick that makes both the turtle and pendant vanish from the aquarium. And leaves behind a note saying "the shy mermaid has dissolved into foam in my hand." This story will continue in the next volume.

So, on a whole, a pretty strong and interesting volume, but with all of its strength and interest lying in the Mystery Train story. The second story was not bad, but uneven and can't judge the Kaitou KID story until I've read vol. 79. A volume containing another promising-sounding, half-a-dozen chapters spanning impossible crime story involving vampire lore. More than enough to look forward to!

After School Activities: Q.E.D. vol. 14 by Motohiro Katou

The 14th volume of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. begins strongly with "Summer Vacation Case," which is presented as relatively minor, uncomplicated slice-of-life mystery, but don't be fooled, the story poses a tricky puzzle with an impossible situation, alibi charts and a 3D floor plan – situated among the members of various college clubs. These after-school clubs are an important part of Japanese school-and university college and often feature in shin honkaku detective stories. You might remember the mystery club members who populated Yukito Ayatsuji's Jukkakukan no satsujin (The Decagon House Murders, 1987) and Alice Arisugawa's Koto pazuru (The Moai Island Puzzle, 1989). Not to mention a staple of the anime-and manga detective story. 

"Summer Vacation Case" takes place at Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara's high school during the summer holiday when "only the sound of club activities" echoed through the buildings. But everything is far from normal or peaceful on the quiet school ground and empty classrooms.

A hooligan is active on the premise and has been committing weird acts of vandalism in-and around the various school clubs. A big "X" was drawn with ink on the floor of the newspaper club's classroom. A pail with the ashes of burned newspapers was left in front of the calligraphy clubroom and the third incident happened in the corridor of the third-year classrooms, which is where a spray painted graffiti was discovered alluding to the fourth incident – providing the plot with a fresh and original impossible crime. A basketball crashes through the window of the dojo of the kendo club, but there was no one outside and the classrooms opposite the dojo are too far away to assume "someone threw the ball with that much strength." So it's almost "as if the ball appeared out of thin air."

Mizuhara is a member of the kendo club and injured her wrist in the incident, which immediately brought Touma to the scene. This is where the story became so much more than its premise suggested. What makes "Summer Vacation Case" such a great detective story is simply synergy.

Firstly, there's the division of work between the two detectives. Mizuhara often played the Archie Goodwin to Touma's Nero Wolfe, but it worked better here than usual and complimented the plot. She talks to the various club members and uncovers the contours of the motive, but it's Touma who figures out the "curious connection between these events." I particular appreciated the trick that was hidden behind the graffiti. But than all of the plot-strands were pulled together to show how they worked in conjunction, which demolished a cleverly-staged alibi and the basketball illusion. It's detective stories like this one why I doff my deerstalker to the shin honkaku writers.

The second story, "Irregular Bound," is a quasi-inverted mystery in which a city council member of T City, in Tokyo, is found next to his private plane at F Prefecture's airport with a stab wound in his upper arm – who quickly lost consciousness from the lost of blood. An envelope with "a political contribution of one million yen" has "completely disappeared." The reader is more than aware that one of the characters has fabricated an alibi with a radio broadcast of a baseball game, but the story is essentially a multi-varied whydunit with a twist. What is the real reason behind the fake alibi? Why did the wounded victim fly from Tokyo to F Prefecture? And why does Touma believe "this case will automatically reach a dead end" if the victim wakes up.

This is one of those typical-atypical Q.E.D. character-driven detective stories that you can only find in this manga series and "Irregular Bound" managed to weave several, character-focused plot-threads around a very simple and sordid crime. The key to the problem are the victim and suspects themselves. So you can say it succeeded in what it was trying to do, but without doing anything to make it standout and the whole story felt very inconsequential compared to the after-school shenanigans of the previous story. A decent, but forgettable, story.

I would have flipped "Summer Vacation Case" and "Irregular Bound" around to end the volume on a high note, but either way, "Summer Vacation Case" carried this volume and a candidate for my top 10 favorite Q.E.D. stories from vol. 1-20. Six more to go!

Beware of Snakes: Case Closed, vol. 77 by Gosho Aoyama

This year, Viz Media will be publishing a translation of vol. 80 in Gosho Aoyama's long-running, immensely popular detective-series, Case Closed a.k.a. Detective Conan, which is amazing considering the first English release dates back to September, 2004 – roughly a decade and fifty volumes behind the original Japanese releases. So that backlog will be reduced to about twenty volumes by the end of 2021! 

Unless there's a drastic change in their schedule, Viz should catch-up with the Japanese releases sometime this decade and hand me the excuse needed to finally reread the series. While complaining about having to subsist on one or two new releases a year. But that's a post-2025 problem.

So, for now, let's tackle vol. 77, which begins with the conclusion to the kidnapping case that ended the previous volume on a cliffhanger. Detective Takagi, of the Metropolitan Police, disappears without a word and the next day a package is delivered to police with a stripped and modified tablet showing a live camera feed of the missing policeman – gag and tied to a plank on a high-rise construction with a noose around his neck. Conan helped track down the kidnapper, but this person slipped through their fingers and now it has become a race against the clock to find the ever weakening and fatigued Takagi. Satisfyingly, the ending revealed the story was a little more than merely thriller-filler.

I'm not overly fond of kidnap stories as they tend to be an author's excuse for lazy plotting, but Aoyama regularly proves himself to be the exception to the rule and knocks out a good one every now and then (e.g. vol. 72). This story is another one of his demonstrations that some ingenuity can be applied to a kidnapping plot, but here it also helped that one of the character-centered plot-threads ran through the story. So not a bad start to a new volume.

The second story is fairly simple and straightforward with a who-of-the-three situation, which is typical for the series, but the plot has a great take on the alibi problem.

Conan, Anita and Takagi happen to be nearby when a sleazy tabloid publisher, Daisuka Katsumoto, dropped to his dead from a top-floor of a condo building with a phone in his shirt pocket, which has a recent message he texted to multi people – cleverly used to isolate the three suspects from the crowd of onlookers. Conan resents the message and three phones in the crowd began to buzz. All three suspects live in the same building as the victim and even worked under him, which turns out to give them a motive as he used them to concoct a dirty smear story. A story that resulted in a suicide. Only problem is that they all possess a very unusual alibi.

The three suspects lived on the third floor of the condo complex and the victim resided on the 26th floor, but "they claimed they could prove they'd been in their condos" and could not have made the seven-minute trip to the victim's condo. And reappear seconds later on the sidewalk. What they give as evidence is "a beer with fresh foam... steam from a coffee cup... and smoke from a cigarette." So no tinkering with clocks or people's perception of time, but foam, steam and smoke that gave the suspects a solid, ten-minute alibi!

I can think of one other detective story that played with a similar idea, Arthur Porges' "Black Coffee" (1964), in which a burning cigarette and a cup of hot coffee in a locked room were the ingredients of a clever alibi-trick. The trick here is a little simpler in idea and execution, but, what propped it up, is (ROT13) gung gur zheqrere unq vzcebivfr ba gur fcbg. This made an otherwise simple trick a little bit more impressive. So, yeah, I liked it.

Unfortunately, the next story began very promising, but deteriorated and crumbled into one of the worst stories in the entire series!

Ten years ago, a nursery school principal stumbled on an uneven stone pavement with a fish bowl in his arms and was stabbed in the chest by a glass shard, but "the kanji for death was written in blood beside the corpse" – suggesting the hand of a murderer or even a serial killer. Conan/Jimmy's father dismissed and abandoned the case, unresolved, assuring everyone that they'll "never again see this bloody kanji." A decade later, a body is discovered in an alleyway with the kanji of death written in blood. However, the police defers the case to the division investigating thefts and robberies. So why do the homicide detectives refuse to touch the kanji deaths? Regrettably, the solution is preposterous and stretches credulity beyond what's reasonable to expect a reader to accept. You can blame that on the second death. I can accept that happening once, but not twice. This aspect of the story should have been solely focused on that past, unresolved case.

Only thing that somewhat saves this story is the ongoing, character-oriented story-arcs running in the background and the development in this story is very significant. Subaru Okiya observes Conan doing his Jimmy voice over the phone!

The closing story is mostly filler in order to setup vol. 78 and furthering those ongoing story lines, which begins with Anita giving Conan a Mystery Train Pass Ring to the Bell Tree Express. A steam locomotive, "made up to look like the Orient Express," which the Junior Detective League will be riding next week and Anita tells Conan she hopes "that's the only resemblance to an Agatha Christie novel" – a story that will be centerpiece of the next volume. I really look forward to its publication, but now they're on their way to a campsite in the woods. Naturally, they caught someone red handed trying to bury a body near a "Beware of Snakes" sign and this lands them in a heap of trouble. But the focus of the story is on how Anita is going to get them out of it (predictable) with ending showing that her identity, too, is compromised. 

A note for the curious: Anita packed the (temporary) antidote to APTX 4869, but refuses to share it with Conan, because he would use it "to play out your little romantic comedy." I've been saying for years that the only logical flaw in the series is Conan/Jimmy continue to keep his secret from Rachel. The third story here showed why it's cruel to keep her out of the loop ("Don't creep me out like that! You're already the spitting image of him") and the ending why it would be valuable to have her in on it. It's not like she would be any more or less danger than usual.

So, on a whole, this was a very uneven volume, but liked the conclusion to the kidnap story and the alibi-trick of the second story with the two weaker stories benefiting greatly from all the character-development and story progression being played out in the background. Not too badly. I really look forward now to reading the next volume!

A Brush with Rembrandt: Q.E.D. vol. 13 by Motohiro Katou

So it's been a little over a month since my previous review of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 12 and therefore about time to do another one, which brings me to the relatively minor, but fun, volume 13 comprising of two stories perched on two pillars of civilization – namely art and architecture. The first of these stories, entitled "Calamity Man," hearkens back to "1th, April, 1999" from vol. 4 with a plot constructed around an April Fools Day Challenge. But this time, the stakes were much higher! 

Alan Blade is the trillionaire (in Japanese yen) president of Alansoft and his company has developed an OS, Wings2001, which has been "installed on more than 90% of the world's computers," but recently, the quality of his recent employees has gone done. Have they made computers too easy to use and lowered the threshold? So he comes up with a very expensive, tricky plan that involves the teenage genius and high-school detective, Sou Touma.

Eight years ago, Touma was only 9-year-old child prodigy living in the United States and helped out Blade when he started his company from a garage. Touma actually had a part in helping to complete their first OS that "conquered the world." Naturally, he was asked to come work for them after he graduated, but Touma left America without a word to his fellow student (see "Breakthrough" from vol. 3). So now Blade has come to Japan to force Touma to partake into a high-stakes, April Fools Day Challenge and, if he wins, Touma has to come back with him to America to work at his company – renouncing his Japanese citizenship in the process. By the way, Touma holds dual nationality of the United States and Japan. Story mentions Touma has to pick between them when he turns 18.

Although what the challenge, exactly, entails is a little nebulous, but Blade has purchased a luxury cruise ship and turned it into a floating art exhibition of Rembrandt painting. Something a Dutch representative of the Netherlands Rembrandt Art Association "extremely disgraceful" and suspects one "particular piece might even be stolen." Touma's plucky friend, Kana Mizuhara, suggests they steal the painting, but Touma points out "stealing an expensive item like this is not a joke." What else could the challenge entail?

I suspected the direction the story was going to take the moment I read the name of the ship, which suggested two ways in which Touma could outsmart Blade with his dodgy art collection.

Nonetheless, it was a decent and fun enough story that (once more) demonstrated how much Q.E.D. differs from other anime-and manga detective series. Not merely in the very different type of detective stories you can only find in Q.E.D. (e.g. "Serial John Doe" from vol. 7), but it's also the only one with a distinctly international flavor. There have been some foreign excursions or non-Japanese characters in Detective Conan and The Kindaichi Case Files, but here it's part of the DNA of the series.

The second story, "Klein Tower," is more in line with your regular anime-and manga detective stories. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara are asked to lend a helping hand to the university's overburdened research department in photographing and gathering background on a historical structure – ominously called the Tower of Hell. A so-called Sazae Tower with "a double helix pathway" so "there's a single path that leads both in and out," which means "you can go around each floor of a 3 story building in a direct path." The Tower of Hell was built at the beginning of the Showa Era and the builder made it as his personal pathway to paradise. One day, he disappeared inside the tower without a trace and reappeared a year later, as a skeleton, on the top floor of the tower. A historical locked room mystery!

 

Ever since, the tower has been known as an entrance to the underworld, but, over the decades, the village where the tower stands has become "more and more lonely." So the village headman came up with a village revitalization project with the mysterious tower as a marketing ploy. There are, however, some financial hurdles to clear which makes it cheaper to dismantle the tower and rebuild it somewhere else in the village. But they had to know if that's even possible. So the university came to investigate with our two detectives doing the preliminary groundwork.

However, they soon have another task at hand as the current owner and the now very elder daughter of the builder, Umehara Rin, briefly disappears and is found dangling from a rope inside the tower. But it was neither suicide or a locked room murder. The old locked room-trick from the past was used in the present to create an air-tight alibi complete with a timetable. Very clever! But the story has one short coming.

I've had probably a little more exposure to the Japanese detective story than most of my fellow mystery aficionados, but can tell you Soji Shimada's Naname yashiki no hanzai (Murder in the Crooked House, 1982) is par for the course where bizarre and unusual architecture is concerned. Japanese mystery writers have used the corpse-puzzle and unorthodox architecture to completely revitalize the impossible crime and unbreakable alibi tropes. They added a whole bunch of new tricks and possibilities to the genre. So it's always exciting when a Japanese detective story has a building with peculiar features as it's setting, but the alibi/locked room-trick was surprisingly basic and simple. Everything fitted together nicely and liked the explanation to the historical mystery, but nothing outstanding or particular memorable. Something more could have been done with the setting.

So, all in all, a fairly average volume with two good, solid enough stories and, while not standouts in the series, together they were miles ahead of the disappointing stories that made up the previous volume. Things are looking up again!

Space Junk: Q.E.D, vol. 12 by Motohiro Katou

Earlier this month, I returned to Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series with a review of vol. 11, which came after an unintended five-month-long break, but hopefully, I'll be able to come closer to vol. 30 than vol. 20 by the end of 2021 and have now arrived at vol. 12 – a sequel of sorts to the novel-length story in vol. 10. A story that had been recommended to me for over a year now. 

The twelfth volume of Q.E.D. comprises, as usually, of two stories and begins with a relatively minor story, "In the Corner of the Galaxy," with a rarely used background. 

"In the Corner of the Galaxy" opens with a televised panel discussion the possible existence of aliens and visitations to Earth. A UFO researcher, Megiyama Shunichi, claims to have more than enough proof of aliens to "force the government to release documents about them" and plans on holding an exhibition to present all of his accumulated evidence, but the skeptically-minded Professor Osamu Kotsuki asks for a bombshell revelation in "the form of indisputable evidence." What he shows them is a strange picture of an alien drawn by an American who claims to have been abducted by such a creature, which can hardly be considered evidence. One of the skeptics points out that drawings of aliens usually turn out to be copied from movies or book covers, but Professor Kotsuki ("who hates UFOs") finds the drawing to be quite interesting. Surprising everyone!

Professor Kotsuki turns up with a TV crew at Shunichi's warehouse, where he stored his "very valuable objects that prove aliens exist," which comprises of such items as "a can containing air from Mars" and "a signature of an alien from Saturn" (named Hobo Gas) – as well as "a sink for 3m tall aliens." Very tongue-in-cheek. However, the drawing gets stolen and the main suspect is Kana Mizuhara. So it falls to her friend and teenage detective, Sou Touma, to explain this quasi-impossible theft from the closely watched warehouse.

As a detective story, "In the Corner of the Galaxy" is very minor and the solution is neither particular ingenious, or memorable, but liked that it tackled something that has been consistently ignored by (Western) mystery writers. Curses, haunted houses and seances have been a staple of the (impossible crime) detective story ever since Edgar Allan Poe took a spare heart from the horror genre and buried it beneath the floorboards of the locked room mystery to give life to the detective story, but an extraterrestrial element would open up new possibilities and give an entirely different flavor to the detective story. But it has been rarely touched in the West. So a fun little story, but nothing special or memorable.

The second and longest story of vol. 12, entitled "Rainbow Mirror," is a sequel to the novel-length story from vol. 10, "In the Hand of the Witch," which begins with one of the murderers from that story receiving a visitor in prison, but the murderer drinks from a poisoned cup of juice and dies. So the guards immediately pounce on the visitor, Sou Touma! Luckily, there's security camera footage proving his innocence and is released, but where has he gone to? Kana Mizuhara, Yuu Touma (his sister) and Syd "Loki" Green go out to look for him, but someone is attacking and killing people who were involved in that old murder case.

These two linked stories are supposed to be two of the best stories in the series and they're certainly important, character-wise, as it touches on Touma's misfortune of attracting problems that hurt other people, but "In the Hand of the Witch" had a ramshackle plot and the focus on "Rainbow Mirror" was purely on character – not plot. This time, the story was trying to hard and it didn't work as well as the character-driven stories from previous stories. Even the ending missed, what was intended to be, the emotional gut-punch that landed so perfectly in other stories. And the plot of “Rainbow Mirror” walked back a major incident from "In the Hand of the Witch." So, no, this story didn't do it for me.

Regrettably, the end result is the weakest and least satisfying volume up to this point in the series, but this won't lead to another five, or six, month pause. You can expect another Q.E.D. review in February and it could be another twofer volume. So stay tuned!