Familiar Faces: Case Closed, vol. 76 by Gosho Aoyama

The 76th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, a.k.a. Detective Conan, opens with a big, five-chapter long story covering nearly half of the volume and starts out as a fairly standard detective story, but then the plot takes a wild left turn and becomes part of the main storyline – revealing the potential presence of a Black Organization spy. A dramatic, double-layered case that began as a routine assignment. 

Conan built a website for Richard Moore's detective agency, "Private Eye Extraordinair," which netted him the first paying client who hired him over the internet. And the case looks like easy money.

Kei Kashitsuka found a key to a coin locker in the belongings of her recently deceased brother and hired Moore to find the locker, because "it might something important that could be placed in the stiff's coffin," but text messages about scheduling results in missing each other – returning to the office without having met their client. But upon their return, they notice someone has been in the office and they find their client tied up in the bathroom with her assailant, dead as a door nail, sitting on the toilet. Kashitsuka tells them she came to the office and was met by a man claiming to be Moore's assistant, but he knocked her out with a stun gun and came to in the bathroom "bound with duct tape" when Moore with his entourage returned. The man panicked and shot himself. Only minute traces of gunshot residue found on her body and clothes confirm she didn't fire the gun, but Conan has his suspicions.

So this part of the story is basically an inverted mystery with the question how-and why it was done with the shooting being a (borderline) impossible crime and the motive is tied to a botched bank robbery. During the robbery, a bank teller was shot and his last words form one of the most elegant and natural dying messages I've come across since Ellery Queen's short-short "Diamonds in Paradise" (collected in Queen's Full, 1965). This makes for a nice little detective story, but the situation takes an unexpected turn when Conan is kidnapped and everyone comes into action to find him, which include three of the most recently introduced recurring characters, Toru Amuro, Subaru Okiya and Masumi Sera.

All three of them obviously have ulterior motives to hang around Conan and Moore, but the final page of the story suggests one of them is a Black Organization spy, "Bourbon." Considering the three suspects and Aoyama's style of plotting, Bourbon will probably turn out to be a sheep in wolves clothing pretending to be a wolf in sheep's clothing (i.e. a double agent). A good, eventful story with a new development in the ongoing storyline.

A note for the curious: there's a brief reference in this story to the "Silver Witch Case" from vol. 63, which is a fun impossible crime story about a phantom car that can fly!

Unfortunately, the second story is one of the weakest, most unconvincing stories in the series in a very long time and begins when Doc Agasa, Conan and the Junior Detective League are invited to a barbecue at the home of Sumika and Takushi Konno – a married couple who they met and helped during a camping trip. However, they're constantly arguing with each other and ends with Amy seeing Sumika threatening Takushi with a knife and yelling "I've had enough... I'll kill you." But when Agasa and Conan hurry to the scene, it's a wounded Sumika who's on the floor with a knife sticking out of her body. This could have been a decent enough detective story and one line in particular, "you always get carried away with pranks," suggested the Konnos could have prepared a prank for the young detectives by staging a little domestic murder. Takushi simply took advantage of it to take his wife out the picture in a way that looked like self-defense. Sadly, the solution leaned heavily character manipulation and timing, which was neither cleverly done or very convincing. And the happy, lighthearted ending struck a jarring note with all the drama preceding it.

The third and last story of the volume is a Metropolitan Police Love Story, but this time, it's a thriller! Detective Takagi disappears and a package is delivered to his colleague and girlfriend, Sato, which contains a modified tablet with a live stream – showing Takagi in a precarious situation. Takagi lies flat on his back, tied up and gag, on a wooden plank on a very high construction surrounded by tarp. A noose is tied around his neck and without any clues, or demands, they only have his past cases to go in order to find him. A story ending on a cliffhanger that will be concluded in the next volume.

On a whole, it's not too interesting a story (so far), but one aspect of the plot deserves to be pointed out. This is the second time, in the entire series, Western readers have an advantage over Japanese readers when it comes to a language-based clue, which this time was impossible to hide in the English translation. You've to be denser than Arthur Hastings to miss it. You can find that first story in vol. 55.

So, yeah, it's difficult to rate this volume, because all of its strength is in the first story, but followed by a very weak one and something I fear will turn out to be nothing more than thriller-filler. But then again, if you're this far into the series, you'll be more than happy with the first story!

Give Up the Ghost: Q.E.D, vol. 11 by Motohiro Katou

On January 19, 2020, I reviewed volume 4 of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series and intended to reach volume 10 before the end of the year, which was accomplished in August, but the idea to end 2020 with a review of volume 20 didn't get anywhere – decided to give myself an extension until the end of 2021. So here we are and, hopefully, I'll manage to get closer to volume 30 than 20. 

The eleventh volume of Q.E.D. comprises of the usual two stories with the first one being fairly conventional and not unlike the detective stories that can be found Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed. But the second story is the irregular, off-the-wall kind of mystery that this series has entirely made its own. 

"Sea of Refuge" takes place in a small, seaside village with two kilometers (1.4 miles) from the shore a horse-shaped rock sticking out of the water. At night, at high tide, "only the head of that rock could be seen above the water" and you had to swim at night "to climb the head of the rock," which is why the locals scared their children – telling them they'll be if they ever "touch the head of Horse Rock." A warning that was ignored by four children. Forty years ago, they swam to Horse Rock, but only three returned. The body of the fourth washed up on the beach the next day.

Decades later, the father of the dead boy and his three friends receive an anonymous letter telling them "that there was something suspicious about the accident." And invites them to return to the village.

Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara happened to be on a class trip to the beach and they not only become aware of that 40-year-old tragedy, but it's Mizuhara who spots a body floating next to Horse Rock. A body belonging to one of three men who swam to the rock all those years ago. So they begin to poke around the case with Touma doing all the mental work and Mizuhara the legwork, which revealed more than just a murderer. The solution added another, bitter tasting layer to that decades old tragedy. These tragic, very human puzzle stories with an emotional punch (let's call them heart breakers) is another type of detective story that Q.E.D. turned into a series trademark. "The Fading of Star Map" (vol. 3), "The Afterimage of Light" (vol. 5) and "The Frozen Hammer" (vol. 9) are good and strong examples of these heart breakers. So the who-and why are the strongest joints of the plot, but completely undersold a great alibi-trick and clue. More could have been done with that. 

"Sea of Refuge" is a pretty standard fare for this series, but still a good and solid read with an ending showing that the truth is not a soothing balm for the soul.

The second story, "Winter Zoo," is a different story altogether and breaks one of the cardinal sins of the detective story without, technically, breaking or even scuffing it – which is done by employing it as a (mostly) powerless spectator. What can break a rule without actually breaking it, you ask? A restless ghost! 

"Winter Zoo" begins with an aspiring mystery writer, Shitatsumi Nagao, walking down the street with the accompanying text, "this is what I looked like when I was alive." Nagao is on his way to a publishing company, but, without noticing it, he lost his manuscript. Luckily, it was found by Touma and Mizuhara. Touma deduced the manuscript back into its owner's hands, which amazes Nagao and assures Touma he's "going to be an amazing kid detective one day." So all is well that ends well? Of course not. A few panels later, the ghost of Nagao is floating above a body in the closed-off exercise area of a lion's cage and overhears the police drawing all the wrong conclusions. Nagao decides to haunt "that kid detective," which is easier said than done.

 

 

As a ghost, Nagao's ability to communicate with the living is very limited to almost being non-existent. Nagao tries to possess a shop girl helping Mizuhara and whispered "go to the zoo" in her ear while she slept. So she eventually drags Touma to the zoo where they're presented with a three-part problem. Firstly, what happened to the exotic murder weapon? The answer to this question reveals a nifty trick solving that age-old question of how to dispose of that pesky, incriminating instrument of death. Secondly, the problem of the narrow, five-minute window in which the body could have been placed in the lion's cage. A quasi-impossible problem that Touma solved with the assistance of a teddy bear. Thirdly, how the dead man in the lion's cage is linked to a suicide that happened around the same time.

So, yeah, this is a very gimmicky story, one of the most gimmicky in the series, which hinges more of the detectives unwittingly helping a ghost find peace that solving the puzzles, but Q.E.D. is the only series that can get away with it – showing why it's a one-of-a-kind in the genre. Even when you limit the scope to anime-and manga detective series.

Admittedly, there have been better stories and stronger volumes in the series, but these two stories still formed a good, rock solid volume that made me regret putting the series on hold in August. So expect a review of volume 12 before too long!

Ask DNA: Case Closed, vol. 75 by Gosho Aoyama

The 75th volume of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, originally titled Detective Conan, begins, as so often is the case with this series, with the conclusion to the story that left the previous volume with an open end, which began with a dead man's letter summoning Harley Hartwell to Tokyo – where he and Conan become involved with the murders of two of the dead man's relatives. Conan and Harley were present when his son ate a randomly picked, poisoned slice of cake and Harley found the body of his mother in her study. However, "she was alone in the study" and "the room was guarded by cops." So it was either suicide or "a locked room murder."

This is a long, involved and somewhat complicated story in which two different cases overlap and the focus in these last two chapters are on the two poisoning-tricks, because the plot-threads revolving around Harley's dead client are quickly resolved through a written confession. Such as who killed him and why his dying message was destroyed. Conan and Harley turn their attention to the brace of seemingly impossible poisonings.

Thankfully, the weak and dangerous explanation to the first poisoning, given in the previous volume, turned out to be a false-solution with the actual solution being so much better, cleverer and more believable – a neat trick making good use of the visual comic book format. The second (locked room) poisoning-trick is a lot harder to swallow and the method struck me as very unreliable. But, in either case, it was disturbing to see how carelessly the murderer flung cyanide around the place like it was candy on the 5th of December.

So, on a whole, a good and decent enough story, but not one of the best Conan/Harley team-up stories. Not by a long shot.

The second story is an interesting one! Conan and Rachel accidentally discover that someone is posing as her father, Richard Moore, who has been visiting the 70-year-old Takae Kiritani and "solving cases free of charge." Moore refusing to accept money? Something smells fishy! Conan and Rachel confront the man posing as the great "Sleeping Moore," Ryohei Onda, who turns out to be a young college student and is engaged to the granddaughter of the old lady, but why the deception. Ryohei explained that she had been afraid of burglars and posing as a famous detective, to help install new locks, helped to make her feel safer, but she kept calling him to give small cases to solve. Such as finding a lost cat or why her TV kept changing the channels even though she "wasn't touching the zapper." Conan decided to help fake Moore solve the case of the living room poltergeist, who kept changing the channels, but then a murder is discovered next door.

A very loud, rude and much disliked resident is found dead when his neighbors forced open the door of his apartment, because his alarm-clock kept beeping, where they find him slumped against a wall with his throat slit and clutching a bloodied knife – a key is lying near the body. Conan immediately deduces that the murderer has to be one of the three neighbors who discovered the body, but the murderer's alibi-trick proved to be a tougher nut to crack than the locked room-trick.

This is undeniably a minor entry in the series, but also a perfect example of Aoyama's abilities and talent as both a plotter and storyteller. A relatively simplistic story with multiple, beautifully dovetailed layers. Firstly, you have the breakdown of the locked room and alibi-tricks. Secondly, the true reason why Ryohei is posing as Richard Moore and why he's so interested in the old lady. Thirdly, why the old lady habitually raises her voice and barks out orders. Everything is connected, one way or another, which include the throwaway problem of the living room poltergeist. Yes, Conan's initial solution was wrong! So, yes, I liked this amusing and clever story.

The third story is another chapter in the ongoing soap, known as the Metropolitan Police Love Story-arc, in which Detective Chiba is entirely oblivious that his first, long-lost love is the new police recruit of the traffic department, Neako Miike. Conan and the Junior Detective League try to bring them together as they're trying to find someone who spray paints cars with the slightly hostile message, "DROP DEAD." The plot hinges on finding a link between the vandalized cars and why they were being targeted, which had been well-clued in advance. Another relatively minor, but good, story.

The fourth and last story ends this volume with a punch to the gut! A dark and sad story as good and strong as "The Poisonous Coffee Case," from vol. 60, which brings Richard Moore to a belated engagement party of an old high school friend, Raita Banba, who will be married to the next day to Hatsune Kamon – only she never makes it to the wedding. Hatsune burned to death that night and evidence at the scene suggests it was murder.

I spotted the key piece of the plot on the second page, but refused to believe what I was reading and didn't expect Aoyama would go there. But he did go there. And how! I know most of you don't read this series and you might have gotten the idea from the bright, colorful covers or cartoon-like premise that Case Closed is a comic cozy, but Case Closed is no stranger to some gloom and doom. I already mentioned the very noir-ish and excellent "The Poisonous Coffee Case" or the second story here has Conan (pretty much a small child) crawling around a dead man who had bled to death in his home. Case Closed is by Western standards not exactly kid friendly (rated T+ in America), but it's still a traditional, puzzle-oriented detective series. And these type of detective stories tend to eschew certain crimes or subjects. For example, I've read an ungodly amount of detective stories, but can only remember three novels in which a rape occurred. While this story uses something very different, I honestly never expected it to be used in this series.

Even with stumbling to it early on in the story, the solution still delivered its intended blow. Even without the tragic ending, the plot is a minor technical masterpiece with a solution woven around to normally unpardonable sins. One of them is a personal dislike and the other a rule that was set in stone nearly a century ago, but miraculously, they both worked under these very specific set of circumstances. Proving once again that the rules and conventions of the detective story can be broken, or bend, but only by people who understand and respect them. Aoyama also demonstrated modern forensic science, like DNA, doesn't have to be a stumbling block or obstacle.

My only complaint is that [redacted] decision seems a little too radical and drastic. There's no denying [redacted] situation is not an enviable one, but surely, there must have been a better solution. Otherwise, this was a very good and memorable story that came close to matching "The Poisonous Coffee Case." The story also introduces a new face to the ever-growing cast of recurring characters, Toru Amuro, who's a private detective.

So, yeah, a pretty solid volume with two minor, but well written and plotted, stories bookended by a big Conan/Harley team-up and one of the most tragic cases in the series. I wasn't disappointed.

Sweet Poison: Case Closed, vol. 74 by Gosho Aoyama

The 74th of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, published in Japan as Detective Conan, begins with the conclusion to the case that closed out vol. 73 in which an armed man with explosives strapped to his chest takes Richard Moore, Rachel, Sera and three aspiring female mystery novelists hostage – demanding that the famous "Sleeping Moore" identifies the murderer of his sister. Miku Sawaguri had become one of the youngest, bestselling novelists of Japan when she was found dead, in a locked room, at a hot spring resort. She apparently committed suicide, but her brother refused that explanation.

Just before she died, Miku posted several messages online indicating she had three visitors to her hotel room, whom she referred to as the elephant, fox and mouse, to ask for an autograph. So one of these three visitors must be the killer, but who and how?

Conan has to assume his original identity and reason with the hostage taker over the phone to both solve a murder, in record time, as well as preventing a small bloodbath, which is done with an excellent use of the false solution – based on the victim's superbly titled novel, The Grim Reaper's Funeral Procession. Conan even gives a brief description of the plot and it's a psychological thriller about a homicide cop investigating his own murders. Anyway, the locked room-trick is nothing special and a slight variation on an age-old trick, but the vital clue pointing straight to the murderer was beautifully hidden in plain sight. So, technically, a good and solid story, but nothing to make it standout in the series.

The second story is going to be hard to properly describe, because the plot appears to be all over the place with recurring characters turning up or being mentioned. A trend that runs, like a red-thread, through the entire volume.

Doc Agasa found an old pot in his shed that he once bought at a flea market and posted a video online asking for an appraisal, but Anita accidentally appeared in the video. Conan is afraid that the video might lead members of the Black Organization to their doorstep, which is exactly what seems to happen when Amy, not Anita, is kidnapped. But the case takes a bizarre turn when they find a cellphone with a note saying, "read the text and follow the orders." Whatever they expected the ransom demand to be, it certainly wasn't that!

I've said several times before that kidnapping stories are my least favorite kind of detective story, because they're rarely any good, but, every now and then, a truly good one turns up and it's usually in this series – such as the excellent second story from vol. 72. This one is even better! I thought it was very clever to (ROT13) pbire-hc bar pevzr (gursg) jvgu nabgure (xvqanccvat) giving gur xvqanccref na rkphfr gb hfr gur eht gb jenc naq pneel Nzl va jvgubhg nggenpgvat fhfcvpvba. Normally, this would be good, if minor, entry in the series, but then there are all the recurring characters suspiciously sneaking around in the background or mysteriously being referred to. Masumi Sera is asking pesky questions and obviously is up to something. Subaru Okiya is spying and eavesdropping on Conan. A lost cat features in the story and has a coincidental link to another familiar face in the series. Black Organization is ominously referred to as "Them."

Somehow, Aoyama got more out of the plot than was originally in out with the result being an excellent and memorable story. A story that comes highly recommended to fans of Edward D. Hoch. You'll know why when you learn the solution. Only disturbing thing is how effortlessly Amy shrugged off her harrowing kidnapping experience. Have the Junior Detective League really become this callous and jaded?

The third story brings Harley Hartwell (Heji Hattori) back to Tokyo, but, before he can tell Conan why, Kazuha calls him to tell that she's detained at a restaurant where a man had died in the bathroom – apparently after eating poisoned candy. A foreign guy had found the body and ordered nobody to leave. And that guy is the FBI agent, André Camel, who previously appeared in vol. 58. Camel overheard the victim talking on his phone to someone he called his childhood friend and admitting to have murdered a man ("I'm the one who poisoned Abe"). Then he heard a groan, broke down the door and found the body. But did Camel correctly understood what he heard? Masumi Sera proposes to use the case to settle the friendly rivalry between the Great Detectives of the East and West, Jimmy Kudo (Conan) and Harley Hartwell.

I imagine Ho-Ling must have loved this story with its linguistic clues and plot balanced on the differences, and nuances, between regional dialects. And how it can even fool native Japanese speakers. A good and decent enough story that, once again, elevated by everything playing out in the background.

The last story tells why Harley traveled to Tokyo, "a letter from a dead man," who expressed his wish to meet the young detective to confess a sin and told him he'll be waiting at "the house of he murdered man" on "the night of the next full moon" – enclosed is a key and an address in Osaka. The writer is the president of design company, Wakamatsu, who was suspected to have been killed by a burglar at his summer villa. But when the appointment was held, they found someone in the bathroom who inexplicably "vanished into thin air." A message had been carved into the wall, "E-Y-E."

Harley arranged a meeting with the victim's family to discuss the case, but they couldn't been inside for more than 30-minutes when one of the family members is impossibly poisoned with a slice of cake. A single slice of poisoned cake that could not have been poisoned or have been forced upon the victim to take. These kind of mysterious poisonings have become a staple of Case Closed and often have solutions that are simultaneously very simple and devilish ingenious (e.g. "The Loan Shark Murder Case" from vol. 15), but this one was a little too simplistic and dangerously careless with cyanide! There's also an obliterated dying message that has to be found at the first crime scene, which is in the hands of two other characters who had previous appearances. Very fitting that they had to be the ones to handle that side of the case. Finally, a second poisoning adds a third victim to the bodycount and ends this volume on a cliffhanger.

On a whole, this was not a bad volume at all, but all of the stories, including the splendid and original second story, used the appearances, cameos and references to all those recurring characters to bolster their plots. For example, the third story would have been a very minor, forgettable case without Agent Camel, Masumi Sera and the battle-of-wits between Conan and Harley. But that's one of the perks of a long-running series that put in the effort to setup an entire fictional universe. So, yeah, an enjoyable volume for fans.

On a last, somewhat related note: three months ago, I posted my fan theory, "Detective Conan: Who's the Boss?," speculating on the true identity of the B.O. leader. Ho-Ling and 8bitorne shot the poor thing to pieces in the comments, but still like the idea of him being Conan's Moriarty.

An American Tragedy: Q.E.D, vol. 10 by Motohiro Katou

Seven months ago, I began my review of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. volume 4 with a belated New Year's resolution, namely to reach volume 10 before 2020 draws to a close, which came sooner than imagined with a little less than five months to go – opening the way to end 2020 with a review of volume 20. This should be doable if I discuss volumes 11-20 as twofer reviews. But lets take a look at volume 10 first!

I've commented in previous reviews that Q.E.D. is practically incomparable the other, more well-known, anime-and manga detective series, because Motohiro Katou took such a radically different approach to characterization, plotting and storytelling-and structure than Case Closed, Detective Academy Q and The Kindaichi Case Files. The tenth volume honors this reputation with one of the most atypical anime/manga detective stories. Yes, I've said that before about previous volumes, but this is truly something else. And for various reasons.

Firstly, the previous ten volumes all comprised of two stories, spread out over two longish chapters, but volume 10 is one long, novel-length story, "In the Hand of the Witch," which is a prequel story that takes place in Salem, Massachusetts – where 300 years ago "the famous witch hunts started in America." So you might reasonable expect a detective story drenched in the lore of witchcraft and witch hunts, but the story is one of murder trial with all the courtroom shenanigans and wizardry of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason. You never see a good, old-fashioned courtroom dramas in these anime/manga detective series.

"In the Hand of the Witch" begins with the return of Sou Touma's younger sister, Yuu Touma, who was introduced in volume 6. She came back to Japan with a postcard that was delivered to her brother's address in the United States and she needed an excuse to visit Touma, but he's not home when she arrives. So she begins to tell Kana Mizuhara the story of the case he had been involved in when he was a 10-year-old child prodigy at MIT. A case that happened five years ago.

At the time, the 10-year-old Touma held a part-time job inputting data for the Massachusetts' District Attorney office where comes into contact with a young and ambitious prosecutor, Annie Craner, who's about to make her courtroom debut.

Craner has been placed in charge of the Marcus Osborne murder case and is tasked with prosecuting and securing a conviction against their suspect, Mrs. Sarah Osborne, who was found to be all alone with the body of her husband when two local policemen on patrol heard a gunshot coming from the Osborne mansion – perched at the end of a cape in Salem. The roads coming in and out of the cape were barricaded and a mountain hunt was conducted without result. So the only person who could have shot Marcus Osborne was his wife. Sharah was a devout member of a dubious organization, The Path to Arcadia, which taught "self-enhancement through the cosmic forces" and "donated a lot of money" to the group.

The police "suspected she killed her husband for the inheritance" and was taken into custody a week later.

 

An easy, slum-dunk case that a young prosecutor can put on their resume, but the oafish, incompetent-looking and nameless defense attorney is giving her an unexpectedly tough fight. A character halfway between Gardner's Perry Mason and Craig Rice's John J. Malone, who not only begins to punch holes in Craner's case, but drops a bombshell in the middle of the courtroom with an alternative solution! A (false) solution backed by ballistic evidence. And on top of that, the public opinion begins to turn against Craner as she's being accused of conducting a modern-day witch hunt.

It takes an astute observation from Touma to put Craner's case back on track, but Touma acts mostly as background character struggling whether, or not, he should help a troubled student, because he sees himself as "a bringer of misfortune" – who always ends up hurting the people around him. Touma is depicted here as a child with too much weight on his shoulder, which gives the story a dark edge. Particularly in the light of the tragic conclusion of the story and trial. Something that had a "profound influence" on him.

So, character-wise, "In the Hand of the Witch" is an important entry in the series and the solution to the murder has some clever and even ingenious ideas, such as where the murder weapon was hidden, but the scheme had too many loose nuts and bolts rattling around to make it convincingly work. Some of those loose nuts and bolts depended on a large repository of pure, undiluted cosmic luck and planning to either obtain or make them work the way it did. This made the murder look more like a reckless gamble than a carefully planned crime and ruined, what could have been, a first-class cat-and-mouse courtroom drama.

Yeah, the plot-technical side of this volume was slightly disappointing with bits and pieces that were hard to swallow, but the storytelling and characterization were as fascinating and surprising as usual. How many of these anime/manga detective series would reduce their main protagonists to background characters in the longest story of the series? A story with a sequel, of sorts, that will be told in the second chapter of volume 12. So you can very likely expect a twofer review of volumes 11 and 12 sometime later this month.

The Kindaichi Case Files: The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case

The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in 2015 and collected, together with the second half of The Antlion Trench Murder Case, in volumes 6 and 7 of Seimaru Amagi's The File of Young Kindaichi Returns – praised as "surprisingly refreshing" to long-time readers. Since I've always had a love-hate relationship with this series, I decided to pick The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case over the new 37-Year-Old Kindaichi Case Files as my next stop in the series.

The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case brings Hajime Kindaichi, Nanase Miyuki and Saki (#2) to a Western-style mountain inn, in Yozakura Village, where they intend to research an old murder case for their school's Mystery Club. The inn used to be a private sanatorium, in the 1960s, but the arrival of Dr. Kigata Ouryuu coincided with the disappearance of a worrying number of patients.

On a dark evening, in late winter, a night nurse caught him burying a dismembered patient under the cherry blossom trees, where the police later found a private graveyard, but Dr. Ouryuu had already disappeared – never to be seen again. But when spring came, something unbelievable happened. Where the bodies had been buried, the trees bloomed with "crimson-colored cherry blossoms" that "looked like they'd sucked blood." So the story stuck in the public imagination, but everyone in the village prefers to forget it ever happened and that includes the elderly owner of the inn, Aizen Yoshino. She advises the three students to enjoy the crimson cherry blossoms and then return home. But things are never that easy in a detective story!

When they arrive at the inn, they meet Fuyube Sousuke, Etou Chinatsu and Onoda Kyouichirou, who have been friends since their schooldays and visit the village each year during the cherry blossom season. Miyazawa Shouku is an artist who comes each year to paint the crimson cherry blossoms. Toramoto Katsuo is an old man with a facemask and does very little except intently observing the cherry blossoms. The place is staffed by two part-timers, Hazaki Shiori and Shikishima Daigo, and a cook, Kitayashiki Gouzou.

So had this not been a Kindaichi story, there would have been scarcely a hint of the bloodletting awaiting them the next morning when Onoda didn't turn up at the breakfast table. The door of his room is locked and has to be opened with the master key. What they found behind that locked door was a spectacle, even for this series!

Onoda Kyouichirou is lying in the middle of the room with petals covering his body and the branch of a bloodthirsty cherry blossom piercing his heart, as if a small tree had grown out of his chest overnight, but equally curious is a braided cord "tied in a complicated manner" to the branch – a cord with the room key on it. The key is "an old model, German-made key" with a complicated design that's hard to duplicate and the master key was kept in a safe. A safe to which one person held the key and another the passcode. And with the windows securely fastened, Kindaichi and Inspector Kenmoichi are faced with a locked room murder.

 

Naturally, the murderer is not done yet and one of the subsequent murders is committed under practically identical circumstances in a locked and guarded room, but with a very different kind of solution. A solution that was audaciously foreshadowed in a much earlier chapter. However, the locked room-tricks are not the main draw of the story and neither is the who or even the well handled why. One of the locked room-tricks can only be described as routine and the other is a daring play on a true-and-tried impossible crime technique, while the murderer (purposely?) stands out in the cast of characters.

So what makes The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case a noteworthy entry in the series is the way in which Amagi toyed and subverted the expectations of long-time readers who are more than familiar with the cliches and tropes of the series.

A good example of Amagi toying with readers expectations is the first page, a one-panel prologue, which made think, "ah, this old song and dance again," but then it was openly admitted to and discussed about a quarter into the story – something that has never been done before in the series. Amagi delivered on the promise with a nicely done spin on the motive that has been done to death in Kindaichi. The identity of the murderer, while a little obvious, proved to have a surprise in store when it was revealed why the murders were presented so bizarrely. But were ultimately very simplistic.

So the (relative) simplicity of the locked room murders were a worthwhile sacrifice, because they served a clear purpose that paid-off in the end. And what a coincidence, I decided to read The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case right after Graham Landrum's The Rotary Club Murder Mystery (1993), which ended up doing the opposite.

All in all, The Bloodthirsty Cherry Blossom Murder Case is not the best title the series has produced, but it's a top-rank title on account of how creatively Amagi played with the expectations of his readers. The story almost reads like a knowledgeable, fan-written pastiche that had fun with the established cliches and tropes of the series. Recommended to fans of the series!

The Unreachable Past: Q.E.D, vol. 9 by Motohiro Katou

I ended my twofer review of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. volumes 7 and 8 with the promise to do another paired review of volumes 9 and 10, but had not counted on volume 10 comprising, entirely, of a novel-length story – making it better suited for a single review. So I decided to discuss volumes 9 and 10 separately.

The 9th volume is another textbook example of what makes Q.E.D so different from other anime-and manga detective series with two stories in which the motives take precedent of the puzzles. These puzzles are perfectly fine with a locked room problem in the second story reminiscent of the impossibly walled-in body from volume 5, but what drove the culprits to create these puzzles is the key to solving them. And the distant, out-of-reach past is the theme tying these stories together.

"The Rules of the Game" revolves around  "a world-class billionaire," Jonas Solomon, who's the chairman of the Solomon Foundation with the power to destabilize the economies of nations "by just flicking his fingers," but the focus here is on his annual private game he hosts behind closed doors – inviting only the smartest people to participate. A huge money prize is awarded to the winner, but the losers have to enter into a conspiracy of silence. They have to keep the secret of the game until death and "even stating an opinion or inquiring about it is forbidden." One of the participants broke the rule with devastating consequences to his company.

Roy Hills, an MIT graduate, build a successful venture enterprise, but needed more money to operate the company and decided to participate in Solomon's private game.

Solomon declared him to be one of the losers. A judgment Hills could not except, because he was convinced he had the correct answer and began asking the other contestants for their answers, but found "an unexpected truth" of the game. And then Solomon began to extract his revenge on him. So he made his escape to Japan where he came across a familiar face, Sou Touma!

Touma graduated at the age of 15 from MIT, but wanted to experience life as an ordinary, Japanese high school student and moved back home. They were in the same class at MIT and Hills tells Touma that, if he want to know more, to enter the game, but Touma tears up the paper – refusing to take part in a potentially dangerous game. Kana Mizuhara disagrees. She ensures her friend receives an invitation in the mail. They soon find themselves as guests at a remote and imposing mansion with geniuses from China and Italy, but the puzzle they have to solve, and the hidden-hidden object puzzle, are not the motor of the plot. The motor is why Solomon created the unusual and even harsh rules of the game, what his dead wife has to do with it and his stubborn personality. And the answers to these questions yield answers to the material puzzles.

One more thing you have to know, to understand "The Rules of the Game," is that it's set during Christmas and can be read as a detective story retelling of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) with Touma playing the Ghosts of Christmas to Solomon's Ebenezer Scrooge. The result is an unconventional, character-driven take on the good, old-fashioned seasonal detective story and the kind of unusual story I've now come to expect from this series.

The second story, entitled "The Frozen Hammer," is another story with a puzzle-within-puzzle, but the motivation of the culprit and the nearly unreachable past provide the keys to the unlocking the truth of these puzzles.

The story begins when part of a dried up, mummified arm with a wristwatch dropped from an iron pipe underneath the Kachidoki Bridge on a passing boat and caused a huge sensation, because the rest of the body is found inside the pipe – in the part of the bridge that raises and lowers. And it's "blocked with steel" at both ends! So, in order to extract the body, the bridge has to be raised which "hasn't been done for 30 years." You have to keep in mind that the story is set in either late 2000 or early 2001, which is important when the police learns that the wristwatch on the corpse was made in 1975! That means that the corpse was placed inside the pipe after the bridge was last opened, but how did the murderer managed to do that? The bridge had to be raised just to get the body out and there's no way it could have been placed there when it was closed. But this is not the only impossibility of the plot.

A piece of paper is found on the corpse with a map of rivers and bridges. Touma recognizes it as a centuries old mathematical problem, Seven Bridges of Königsberg, which poses the question whether it's possible "to cross each bridge only once in a single trip" – a similar problem on the Sumida River area map from 50 years ago. But these puzzles are only means to an end. The raising of the bridge drew quite a crowd and Touma is recognized by an old man, Kishizaki, who attended a lecture given by the boy wonder at Princeton University, which prompted him to invite Touma and Mizuhara to his home. Where he shows them pictures, maps and confesses it was him who placed the body inside the bridge, but challenges the "know-it-all kid" to prove whether that's true or not.

A splendid and original premise for a locked room problem, confined to an iron pipe sealed inside a closed bridge, which is given a good solution that was wonderfully foreshadowed in the way the police tried to extract the body. Touma even provided a solution for the bridge-puzzles, but they're only of secondary importance. A tool to tell the story of the old man and his tragic backstory. A backstory that explains why the body had to be hidden inside the bridge and why Touma decided to keep the truth from the authorities. What I loved most about this story is that the culprit actually succeeded in bringing a brief, but tangible, glimpse of the past back into present! But, as one late panel shows, it came at a cost!

So, all in all, this was an excellent volume with two well done, unusually character-driven puzzle stories and can't understand why this series is not enjoying more popularity among mystery readers from anime/manga corner of the genre. Highly recommended!

My current plan for future Q.E.D. reviews is doing volume 10 as a single review and another twofer review for volumes 11 and 12, because the last story from volume 12 is directly linked to the story from volume 10. I'll probably return to The Kindaichi Case Files before, or after, my review of volume 10. Maybe it's time to give 37 Year Old Kindaichi Case Files a try to see what that series is all about. So stay tuned! 

Detective Conan: Who's the Boss?

Some weeks ago, I discussed Tetsuya Ayukawa's The Red Locked Room (2020) and ended the review with the promise to post my fan theory regarding the secret identity of the leader of the Black Organization, which is the red-thread running through the main storyline of Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed – published outside of the English-speaking world as Detective Conan. Mild spoilers ahead!

I'm currently at vol. 73 and wanted to bridge the gap with vol. 74 by rereading and reviewing the landmark story, The Sunset Manor Case, from vol. 30. A story that takes place in palatial, Western-style manor house where six detectives have gathered to solve a decades old mystery and getting murdered. I'm not far enough in the series to officially know that the elusive boss made an appearance, of sorts, in that story, but bits and pieces have been spoiled to me over the years. And when going through the story, it suddenly occurred to me who the boss could be. A character who shrewdly cloaked himself in someone else's feathers, but not in the way long-time readers of the series might assume.

First, I've to get those annoying, but necessary, spoilers out of the way. Continue to read at your own risk. The reader has been warned!

On December 13, 2017, Gosho Aoyama revealed that the boss is, or was, the multi-millionaire who owned Sunset Manor, Renya Karasuma, who "died half a century ago under mysterious circumstances" and, if he's still alive, he would be over a 140-years-old – suggesting he was the first one to rejuvenate. And assumed a new identity. Just like Jimmy/Conan in vol. 1. Very likely, he has appeared more prominently under that identity and has interacted with Conan. I think it's not unreasonable to assume that this identity had already been decided on when the series started with the idea existing some time before the first chapter was published.

So, if you take a look at the earliest characters Aoyama created, one character stands out as a possible candidate to be revealed as the rejuvenated boss. A character who did not originate in Detective Conan and would not appear in the series until that important story in vol. 30. I'm talking about the great teenage detective and arch rival of Kaito KID, Saguru Hakuba! Admittedly, I've only so-called "psychological clues" and a bit of educated guesswork to give as evidence, but they make sense to me. You can decide for yourself.

Saguru Hakuba: "Do you have any proof of that, Tom?"

Renya Karasuma is depicted in vol. 30. as an ominous silhouette with a pet crow perched on his left shoulder and, considering how he has clung to life, the passage of time is likely to great concern to him. Hakuba is hyper-conscience of the flow of time and can note time down to the millisecond, which is quite a developed sense of time for a 17-year-old. Something you would expect from a much older man whose "mind time" quickened its pace as he started to grow older. Since it's very possible Renya rejuvenated more than once, his "mind time" could have developed to the point where he's not only aware of the minutes and seconds ticking away, but the milliseconds as well – making it all the more interesting they appeared in vol. 30. A story in which clocks and outward appearances were integral to revealing the secret of Sunset Manor. You could read it as a metaphorical clue that someone more brighter and appealing was hidden behind that dark silhouette. This leads me to what is perhaps the most tangible clue.

Aoyama is very fond of parallel, or mirrored, characterization that he primarily reserves for his main and recurring characters. Jimmy/Conan and Kaitou KID are the most obvious example of this. But if you accept Hakuba and Renya are one and the same person, you can see this mirror approach to characterization all over their double identities.

I believe the most blatant clue is Renya's depiction, in vol. 30, as a dark silhouette with a black crow on his shoulder and Hakuba debuted in that same story carrying his pet hawk, Watson. Crows and hawks are natural enemies! Renya and Hakuba also mirror each other outwardly, an old, Moriarty-like master criminal and a young, Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective, but apparently, Renya tends to overthink his schemes – which makes him prone to mistakes. If my idea is correct, you can see this mistake reflected in his disguise.

Jimmy and Conan

A disguise that was put on a little too thick when he debuted, in Magic Kaitou, wearing a cape and deerstalker, which he later ditched, but could indicate Aoyama had already decided to make him the boss in Detective Conan. Renya is based on Professor Moriarty. So why not make him pose like a young detective who used to dress up like Sherlock Holmes who has the Japanese Arsène Lupin as his nemesis, which also gives him a double-layered motive to hunt down the KID. Firstly, KID is the kind of character who could become a potential threat to his organization and, one way or another, has to be eliminated. Secondly, a long-standing rivalry with a master criminal cements his position as one of the good guys. Thirdly, it would be a masterstroke to hide your main villain in another series and only have him appear in the main series as a novelty, crossover character to make some of the bigger stories even more special. It would be one of the greatest play on the least-likely-suspect!

There is, however, a weakness in my theory: Hakuba has two known relatives, a father and uncle, who can only be explained as members of the organization posing as relatives and help prop up his false identity. I know this is stretching things, but remember Renya has the resources and time to create such an elaborate identity that he could (literally) grow into over the years. And the relatives hold positions in society that can be very handy to a criminal organization. Hakuba father is the Superintendent General of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and his uncle is the owner of a research laboratory, which is another aspect that could be tied to the main storyline of Detective Conan.

When you take all of this together, there's one more thing that stands out as a potential clue. As previously mentioned, Hakuba made his first appearance, in Detective Conan, in the Sunset Manor Case and remarked that, "after 40 years," he was "finally able to step inside the scene of the tragedy" he had "long heard of only in frightened whispers" – not that he had never been inside before. And that the decades-old tragedy was hardly his "first reason for coming." In the story, his reason for being there is Kaitou KID, but if Hakuba is Renya, his remarks meant something very differently.

So what do you make of my theory? Do you think its close to the truth or just another internet fan theory that will turn out to be completely wrong? This is one post I would very much like some feedback on.

If this post happens to attract Detective Conan readers, I reviewed volumes 38-73 under the Gosho Aoyama tag. I also discussed two brilliantly original impossible crime episodes, The Case of the Seance Double Locked Room and The Cursed Mask Laughs Coldly, and compiled a list with my favorite locked room mysteries from the manga series. Occasionally, I dip into The Kindaichi Case Files or Q.E.D., but the primary focus of the blog is on classic, or neo-classical, detective stories and novels. That where I'll return to with my next post. So stay tuned.