The Foggy Past: C.M.B. vol. 11-12 by Motohiro Katou

The first story from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 11, "Phaistos Disc," returns to the two part, two chapter format in which Mau Sugal, the black market broker, invites Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to her antique shop in Santorini, Greece – one of a dozen shops she has around the world. Sugal promised Shinra to show him parts of her collection of historical artifacts, but, when they arrive at the shop, there's a man waiting for them.

Bier Brust, of Europol, is "the head of the department that deals with stolen artifacts" and, sort of, plays the Jirokichi Sebastian to Sugal's Kaito KID. She just calls him a stalker. Brust is very surprised to see Shinra, holder of the C.M.B. rings, in the company of Sugal, but Shinra is even more surprise to spots "a first class artifact that's been undiscovered until now" among Sugal's inventory. A stamp from the Phaistos Disc! Sugal tells them the stamp has already been sold to Pan Sirius, younger, more outgoing brother of shipping magnate and family patriarch, Andreas Sirius. A family currently in turmoil as Andreas' mistress, Themis Treille, was nearly killed when her boat exploded and whispered rumors say his wife, Illias, tried to kill his mistress. So when Shinra and company accompany Sugal on her delivery of the stamp, they become embroiled in a murder investigation when Illias is shot aboard the family's private yacht with Pan standing over her with a gun. Pan claims he didn't shot her and Andreas was visiting Themis in a nearby hospital. What really happened?

Shinra compares the case to the failed attempts at deciphering the titular disc, because "quite possibly, this incident may not be solvable for the same reason." Shinra, of course, reveals the murderer in the second and concluding chapter showing the theme of the story and plan of the murderer dovetail, but take away historical trappings, the murderer is nothing more than a legendary, hall of fame idiot gambling (ROT13) ba n qnatrebhf oyhss – redeemed only by the motive. So, storywise, this is not a bad story at all with some fascinating sidelines on out-of-place artifacts, hoaxes, decoding ancient tablets and historical background details, but, plot-wise, not the best or terribly convincing.

The second, one-chapter story is "HATSUGAMA Case" and begins Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara from Motohiro's Q.E.D. series making a brief cameo. They dropped by Shinra to wish him a happy New Year, but find he's out and wonder what he's doing. Shinra was asked by Tatsuki's grandfather to join a gathering with a few of his old high school friends for hatsugama, a tea ceremony to ring in the new year, because the friend hosting the ceremony, Kurmatsu, is a terrible snob and bragger. So he wanted Shinra to come along to outsmart him when it comes to tea ceremony trivia. Shinra is far more interested in the other items, but during the ceremony the tea cups disappears from its box and replaced with another item. So who replaced the cup, how and why? This story ended up reminding me of Isaac Asimov's Black Widower short stories with its fairly minor problem and explanation that hinge on a piece of trivia. However, if you happen to be aware of it, there's one scene that will probably bring it back to mind and help you spot the culprit and method. So, yes, a minor story, but a good and fun one.

The third and last, one-chapter story closing out this volume is "Marujime Neko" and is one of those human interest, or heart-shaped puzzles, Motohiro has done so expertly in the Q.E.D. series, but this might be the first one to work in this series. Shinra acts here like a cross between a spoiled brat and an extortionist, but not without a good reason. 

An elderly, recently widowed man, Hiraya Hideyoshi, who had all kind of bad things happen ever since his wife passed away. A stone was thrown throw a window, fire crackers thrown into the garden and eventually an accident happened. Shinra is prepared to help out with the case, but demands Hiraya Hideyoshi's statue called Marujime Neko, "said to be an early prototype of the Maneki Neko," better known as the Beckoning Cat. However, the Marujime Neko was a gift he bought for his wife on their honeymoon and "full of memories," but Shinra refuses to take no for an answer. So the series of strange incidents is only a small side issue, but with a clever piece of visual clueing and reasoning. What makes this story is why Shinra appeared to be so cruel towards an elderly, grieving widower by demanding such a sentimental item as payment. More than meets the eye indeed! Another relatively minor, but very good, story to end this volume on.

"Clay Seal" is the first, one-chapter, story opening C.M.B. vol. 12 and digs a little bit into Shinra's backstory. Shinra was raised by the previous holders of the C.M.B. rings when his mother passed away, acting as his three stepfathers, one of whom Ray Black – a professor as brilliant as he's reckless. Ray Black was called in as an expert by the Louvre when it was discovered clay tablets had someone been stolen from ancient Babylonian pots sealed shut for millennia. Somehow, "the clay seals that had not been opened for thousands of years were bypassed" and tablets stolen. And, to make the situation even more impossible, the seals were marked with a cylindrical stamp rolled over the clay seal. Only kings and other royalty possessed such stamps, which means once it's opened it can never be resealed to its original state. The main interest of the story naturally comes from Shinra and Black's backstory, but enjoyed the archaeological conundrum that reunited them and Shinra's solution how the tablets were taken from the sealed jars is very clever. A solid opener to this volume!

The second story, "An Old Woman and a Monkey," is another one-chapter story, but arguably the best short from these two volumes and a personal favorite. Shinra and Tatsuki are helping out Hinogure Toki, an elderly, sickly and frankly dying woman, clean out and tidying her home. During their work, Shinra and Tatsuki become concerned for the elderly woman, but not for health reasons. They overhear her grandson, Hayao, arguing with his wife Chika over his inheritance ("if you don't get any inheritance from her, I'm divorcing you”). They're not the only ones concerned over her money. Tatsuki eavesdrops on a heart to heart talk between Toki and her accountant, Umiyama Takeshi, who has embezzled her money and appears to be unable to return it ("...sicker I get, the less forgiving I will be... so please, keep that in mind"). So they advise her to lock her bedroom door during the night and Tatsuki even keeps guards in the hallway, which comes with a great floor plan of the situation. When they fail to wake her, they have call the police to have locked door broken open. Hinogure Toki is lying dead in bed, poisoned, while her pet baboon Hihimaru tries to wake her up. The door, and windows, are securely locked from the inside and Toki had not eaten during dinner. There was poison found in the water jug, but neither the jug nor the glass had her fingerprints on it. Hihimaru had nothing to do with either the method of poisoning or locked room-trick.

Like I said, this is a short, one-chapter story and the plot is not terribly complex, but sometimes, there's something to be said for straight forward simplicity – particularly when it has a glimmer of originality. The solutions to the who, why and especially how aren't cliched, or routine, offering a new, simple way to have someone end up poisoned behind a locked door and still make it appear like an impossible crime. A surprisingly tricky thing to do, but Katou did it effortlessly here as in "The Detective Novelist Murder Case" from Q.E.D. vol. 33. I also liked how the story ended with Shinra adopting Hihimaru after finding him being sad in Toki's empty bedroom. Yes, C.M.B. can be a whole lot weirder at times than its sibling series Q.E.D. Nonetheless, this story is (IMO) a series highlight!

C.M.B. vol. 12 ends ends with a longer, two-chapter story, "The Actress Sees a Ghost," which is much more of a psychological thriller with supernatural overtones than a detective story. The story takes place in Hong Kong where a man, Wang Qing Yun, fell to his death from rooftop into a garbage container. So his body was not found until collection day, three days later. A death filed as a suicide, however, the victim used to be the boyfriend of a rising actress, Zhang Qian Lian, who has been slowly unraveling and ruining her career in the process. For some time, she's being haunted by the unsettling, watery ghost of a man and the haunting provides the story with some of its best panels. For example, the ghost manifests itself at a fish market through a wall of fish aquariums! Shinra and Tatsuki become involved, but the hook of the story how "the person who successfully forced the real culprit to confess was an unexpected one." So a very well done story in that regard, but have nothing much else to say about it.

So, on a whole, vol. 12 is overall better than vol. 11, but both volumes show Motohiro Katou is starting to get the hang of these one-chapter stories as they get better, and better, from "HATSUGAMA Case" and "Marujime Neko" to "Clay Seal" – culminating with "An Old Woman and a Monkey." Look forward to the next two volumes!

Time Wants a Skeleton: C.M.B. vol. 9-10 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 9 opens with a two-part, two chapter story, "The Sun and a Folklore," which brings Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki to Machu Picchu, Peru, accompanied by their mutual frenemy, Mau Sugal – a black market broker and professional nuisance. Sugal explains to a skeptical Shinra a piece of Inca gold has turned up ("most of the Inca gold was melted down by the Spanish into gold ingots"). It happened during a curious incident two weeks ago.

Professor Polaiyu discovered in the university archives an uncatalogued quipu ("a necklace that conveys a message using the number of knots") with knots and markings he had never seen before. After studying the quipu, Professor Polaiyu became convinced it conveyed a coded map of the underground tunnels leading "from the Temple of Sunlight to the Golden City." So he organized a small expedition into the tunnel system with a local guide, Hulio, but only the young guide came back out clutching a piece of Inca gold. Hulio's story is that he lost the professor when the batteries of his flashlight died, but refuses to tell where he found the gold. Not long after getting involved in the case, the body of the professor is found near the exit along with his digital camera with blurry pictures on it. And the first part ends with an unambiguous murder.

I wouldn't call "The Sun and a Folklore" a typical, traditional whodunit, more an adventures mystery of myth and folklore, but thought the problem of batteries presented an inspired piece of clueing – strengthened by its conclusion. A slightly unexpected and unusual conclusion with the last two panels adding a touch of sad tragedy to the whole case. So, in many ways, a typical Katou story and a good one at that!

The second story, "The Metamorphosis," is a one-chapter short taking place at Meiyuu Private High School's library. Shinra and Tatsuki are in the library, helping out with chores, when they spot a picture hanging above the door. A strange picture depicting "a beautiful butterfly with a grotesque looking caterpillar," which turns out to be relatively valuable drawing by the 17th century entomologist and scientific illustrator, Maria Sibylla Merian. So, of course, they let it hang above the door and, as to be expected, it disappeared. The circumstances under which it disappeared makes it something of an impossible crime. There was only one student present in the library and the picture vanished during a 30 minute window, during which nobody could have taken the picture out of its frame without being noticed by the student ("the windows, they were all locked"). So, if the student is innocent, who stole the picture and how? Shinra's solution is as ingenious as it's impractical and liable to misfire, but Katou was obviously aware of the problem and worked the difficulty of pulling off this trick into the solution. I allow it! :)

The third and last one-chapter story from this volume is "Abortive Migration" and brings Shinra and Tatsuki to the island of Okinawa to photograph marine wildlife. They have two diving instructors to along with them, Tsuruoka Nobuaki and his wife Miki, but the two have a badly disguised argument and it later turns out to be related to his first wife, Keiko – who died in a tragic diving accident. Tsuruoka and Keiko had been diving when encountering a lot of dead fish and eventually a humpback whale. But he "lost track of her beneath the shadow of the whale." Keiko's body would not be found until a week later. Tsuruoka Nobuaki has ever since lived under a cloud of suspicion and now it's coming to a head with his second wife. I guess you can pigeonhole this story in the psychological crime slot, but personally found a dull and weak story to close out this otherwise excellent volume.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 10 has four, one-chapter stories starting with a personal favorite, "Sixty Million Years," in which a brother-and-sister team of archaeologists, Hera and Joyce Colbert, ask Shinra to come out to the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Hera and Joyce unearthed, what can only be called, an impossible fossil, "human and dinosaur fossils, together in the same strata." But there they are, "together with the dinosaur fossil placed above the human fossil" ("this is clearly impossible"). Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, is called upon to authenticate and, if possible, explain what they found. It's to be regretted Katou only gave the story a single chapter instead of two, or three, chapters to explore the possibility of faking such a fossil and some of the fringe theories ("...an advanced ancient civilization existed"), which were only mentioned passing. However, Shinra's explanation places this story in the same category as Ross Rocklynne's "Time Wants a Skeleton" (1941) and James P. Hogan's Inherit the Stars (1977) without treading into science-fiction or hybrid mystery territory. "Sixty Million Years" simply is an impressive piece of 19th century-style naturalist impossible crime fiction reimagined in the 21st century with a 65 million year old conundrum. To say I liked this story would be the understatement of the Holocene Epoch!

Unfortunately, the next two, one-chapter stories, "The Nail" and "Summer Holiday at the World End," were both very minor and disappointing stories. "The Nail" begins with a series of good, old-fashioned creepy chain mails, "if you don't make this picture into your background wallpaper, you will receive grave misfortunes," going round Shinra and Tatsuki's school. The place in the picture is easily identified and this leads to hit-and-run incident where the culprits claims the victim was pushed in front of his car. I thought this story was uncharacteristically uninspired as Katou simply retreaded the core idea from "Abortive Migration" (SPOILER/ROT13: gur fhccbfrqyl vaabprag fhfcrpg jub gheaf bhg gb or thvygl nsgre nyy) with pretty much the same results. "Summer Holiday at the World End" is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart taking place on the last day of summer break as Shinra, Tatsuki and classmates go the beach. There they hear a strange story of a student who briefly disappeared while exploring a mysterious cave with their friends. So they go explore it for themselves. Not really a bad story. Just very minor and very forgettable.

Katou pulls it together with the last story and ends C.M.B. vol 10 on a banger. "The Hydraulis" finds Shinra and Tatsuki in Milan, Italy, where Mau Sugal wants them to investigate a music chapel, located on a lonely mountain top, which has a hydraulis – a prototype of the pipe organ. That's the first of two mysteries attached to the music chapel. What's an out-of-date hydraulis doing in a 16th century music chapel? The second mystery has to do with its haunted reputation as a room that kills and harms. Everyone who tries to play the organ either dies or get seriously ill ("...there have been over 10 people who died inside that chapel"). "The Hydraulis" shares the same strengths and one weakness with "Sixty Million Years." Shinra's explanation of both how the music chapel poses a danger to people and why it was designed to do so are brilliant. But it needed another chapter to fully flesh everything out. Like the not unimportant historical background of the chapel and location. Other than that, this is a first-rate impossible crime story and original take of the room-that-kills. Highly recommended!

So, all in all, not a bad score for these two volumes. "Abortive Migration" and "The Nail" are the only two stinkers with "Summer Holiday at the World End" merely being forgettable. "The Sun and a Folklore" and "The Metamorphosis" are both good, solid efforts with "Sixty Million Years" and "The Hydraulis" being the two standouts. You expect one of them to turn up on that future "Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B." Not at all disappointed with these two volumes on a whole. What I'm not sure of yet is whether I'm going with C.M.B. vol. 11 and 12 next or start on Q.E.D. iff series. You'll see eventually.

The Nature of Things: C.M.B. vol. 7-8 by Motohiro Katou

Following a short hiatus, I returned to the work of Motohiro Katou back in September with a review of C.M.B. vol. 5-6 and the intention was to have gone through the first ten volumes, before the end of the year, but just noticed I forgot to do C.M.B. vol. 7-8 last month – having reviewed Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 95 in October. So guess you can call that a return to tradition.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 7 differs from previous volumes in both the C.M.B. and Q.E.D. series, which normally contain two longish stories or occasionally a single long story (e.g. C.M.B. Vol. 4), but Katou this time tried his hands at four shorter stories. So the plots and storytelling tend to be smaller in complexity and scope than the longer stories. The result's as mixed and varied as the stories themselves.

"Locust" is the first of these four shorter stories and best described as an ecological mystery-thriller, of sorts, which takes place in one of those remote, mountainous villages named Yamanomizu – plagued and torn by several divisive issues. First of all, the village is divided over the plans to build a road to bring government money to the village and province, but half the village opposed the plans because they "feared that the forest would be torn down." Secondly, the province where the village is located has a plague of locusts and in three days, "the village and their crops will be attacked by the locusts." So the villagers in favor of the road want to spray everything from the fields to the forest with insecticide ("...going to be torn down anyways"). Thirdly, local children spotted a rare, beautiful bird in the forest, "never seen before," but nobody believes them. One of the kids heard of Sakaki Shinra, curator of Shinra's Museum of Antiquities, who takes Nanase Tatsuki to Yamanomizu. Shinra has a pretty good idea about the bird, but seems more interested in the locusts and, of course, someone tries to protect money making road project to give the story a mild touch of the thrillers. Not much of a detective story, plotwise, but the backdrop allowed for a few good, nicely drawn scenes towards the end.

The second story, "Iron Door," is a different story altogether! Mau Sugal, the black market broker, returns to the Museum of Antiquities to take Sakaki Shinra and Nanase Tatsuki along on an unusual treasure hunt. She brings them to an abandoned factory with a once buried, now excavated bunker doubling as an army research laboratory during the Second World War. This leads to a long, dark passageway with a huge, heavy steel door at the end. A door that used to be opened with a motor, but the motor was destroyed when the place was closed and sealed. So now it takes the combined effort of three, or more, people to open it. Mau believes "there's some treasure behind this door," but she needs the other two to help her pry it open. When they do, they find an empty storeroom with the fresh corpse of an elderly man inside, 81-year-old Gomoku Shigetsuga. He turned up shortly after the place was excavated and unsealed to claim the place couldn't possibly be empty.

So while "Iron Door" is as long, or short, as "Locusts," it's a much denser story with a packed, nestling doll-like plot – stacking mystery upon mystery. Who trapped and killed the old man? How did the murderer opened, and closed, the door without help? What did the victim know about the wartime secrets buried in the bunker? And what happened to those secrets? Is there still something hidden in the bunker that the police overlooked? How does Mau figure in this case and why did she leave cartoon smoke after discovering the body? The answers to all these questions nicely dovetail together with the unusual impossible crime situation making it standout, but even better than the original, quasi-inverted take on the locked room mystery is the clearly written, cleverly hidden dying message. Maybe the best use of the hidden dying message since the Columbo episode Try and Catch Me (1977). The best story of the volume!

The third story, "In the Civic Pool," is not necessarily bad, but it has a threadbare plot and a very forgettable story. Tatsuki takes Shinra and some of her classmates to the public swimming pool where they become entangled in a series of mini-mysteries involving missing concert tickets, a water beetle supposedly "extinct in Tokyo" and figure in the swimming pool who disappears like a ghost when looking in its direction. All very simple mysteries with simple, straightforward answers. Only thing that really stood out is Shinra taking care of the water beetle, but other than that, Katou still has to figure out how to translate his trademark character-driven, slice-of-life puzzles to the one-chapter story format.

This volume ends on a high note with a pleasingly conventional mystery, “The Turk,” which is the famous chess playing automaton that toured and enraptured Europe in the 18th century. A replica of the Turk is currently part of Tagame Tatsuo's collection of antique “mechanized puppets” and Shinra, holder of the "C," "M," and "B" rings, has full access to the collection for his research – even gets to play to play the celebrated automaton. During their round of chess, the automaton fails while a robber smashes a display and gets away with three valuable puppets. Shinra promises to get back the antiques in exchange for the replica of the Turk. So the solution appears to entirely hinge on breaking down the alibi of the person who operated the automaton. Shinra reminds everyone the Turk is "not a mechanized puppet," but "more of a magic trick." Like I said, a pleasingly conventional detective story.

By the way, I liked Tatsuki's false-solution infusing the 18th century illusion of the chess playing automaton with modern technology.

Katou's C.M.B. vol. 8 continues the format of vol. 7 with four shorter, one-chapter stories and the first story is “One Hundred and Thirty Million Victims.” Detective Inspector Takeshi receives a picture of an ant-lion accompanied by threatening letter promising that, "on November 6th, at 6 PM, I will enact my revenge. The 130 million people of Japan will be the victims." Takeshi goes to Shinra to use him as a soundboard and, pretty soon, a lead presents itself. A man by the name Yoshikawa Masahisa was arrested and convicted for a disgusting crime: robbing a young mother and kicking over the baby carriage, which injured the baby. So the media and public came down like a ton of bricks on him and his family. However, the real culprit was found years later and Yoshikawa Masahisa was released from prison without a word of apology from the media and public. The story is about trying to prevent someone from taking revenge, however, the ending showed that not everything is as it seems. A prescient ending at that for a story originally published in 2008 (likely had a magazine appearance in 2007). A good opening act!

"A Meteorite" is the second and my personal favorite story from this volume. Shinra travels to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian operated spaceport in Kazakhstan, where "something cumbersome" crashed nearby and created a giant crater – a large meteorite. There are, however, two problems. Firstly, the representatives of Kazakhstan and Russia both stake claim the meteorite. Secondly, the meteorite itself has impossibly disappeared without a trace. Not only the meteorite has disappeared, but they couldn't find a bit of debris or single fragment of it at the impact site. Someone, somehow, cleaned out the entire site in a mere three days. And, given the circumstances, that's a Herculean task. What a great and original premise! Shinra also has to take a well-known meteorite hunter and the locals into consideration when answering these questions and arbitrate the outcome. Yes, the explanation how the impact site was cleaned out is as clever as it's cheeky. Simply a good, fun and original mystery.

The third story of this volume, "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura," gets a little experimental. This story finds Shinra and Tatsuki on a skiing holiday, but, where the ski resort stands today, once stood a mountain settlement, Kushino Village. Shinra naturally gets interested in the backstory of this forgotten village and an old man tells them to visit the shrine, if they want to know more. A shrine dedicated to the cats that once saved the village and a faded backstory, barely legible, written on the wall mentioning demonic possessions, deaths within three days and a husband and wife ("...one of them died"). A short time later, Shinra and Tatsuki get caught in a blinding snow storm, on the advanced trail, that somehow flings them back into the past. On the day when Kushino Village was born into tragedy. So they have to figure out the source of the original tragedy to prevent another, but what gave the story a real chill is when Shinra realizes the truth behind their time-slip adventure (ROT13: n gvzr-ybbc va juvpu crbcyr “ercrngrqyl qvr, sberire”). Not exactly a classically-styled detective story, but this one is more about storytelling than laying out an elaborate plot. I enjoyed it.

On a side note, "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura" is not the first time-slip mystery to feature in Katou's detective fiction. "The Legacy of the Sage," from Q.E.D. vol. 19, transports Kana Mizuhara from 2004 to 1927 where she meets Sou Touma's historical double.

"The Statue of a Male Goat" is the fourth, and final, story from this volume. Shinra is drawing plans, in class, to redo the layout of his museum and he has the resources to do it ("...already hired a moving company"). Meanwhile, the owner of small, struggling moving company is offered a big sum of money to swap the titular statue from the museum's collection for a replica, but stealing from Shinra is not as easy as taking candy from a baby. Another fairly minor story, but always welcome a return to Shinra's museum.

So these eight stories from C.M.B. vol. 7 and 8 present the proverbial mixed bag of tricks. "Iron Door" is the obvious standout and my favorite for boringly predictable reasons with "The Turk" and "A Meteorite" following close behind. I liked "A Strange Tale from Kushino Mura," but more as a historical flight of fancy with criminal intent than as a proper detective story and "One Hundred and Thirty Million Victims" has a memorable conclusion. "Locusts" is mostly scenery, "In the Civic Pool" and "The Statue of a Male Goat" give little to comment on. Not bad, on a whole, considering Katou switched from longer to shorter stories as none of the stories are bad, but some work still needs to be done. I'm curious to see how Katou is going to continue these short, one-chapter stories in C.M.B. vol. 9 and 10 next year.

A Challenger Appears: C.M.B. vol. 5-6 by Motohiro Katou

Three months ago, I finished Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series with my review of vol. 50 and compiled "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50" as a follow-up to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25" shortly after – decided to take a short break from Katou's detective fiction. A short break that lasted about a month longer than originally intended. Having "spammed" Q.E.D. reviews earlier in the year, I wanted to return to C.M.B. before starting on Q.E.D. iff.

The first, of two, stories from C.M.B. vol. 5, "Gutenberg Bible," brings a rare visitor to Sakaki Shinra's strange, hidden Museum of Antiquity. A young, foreign woman, Mau Sugal, who carries around a huge, briefcase-like backpack and speaks Japanese perfectly.

What she brought along is a historical treasure: a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible. She wants Shinra, holder of the "C," "M" and "B" rings, to give his expert opinion and, if possible, authenticate it. When he asks where the page came from and under which circumstances it was obtained, Sugal tells him she "cannot reveal that due to the exact wishes of the customer." Shinra flat out refuses to authenticate the page much to the annoyance of his friend, Nanase Tatsuki ("she's in trouble and needs your help"), but he can't risk the Gutenberg page being sold on the black market with his seal of authenticity stamped on it. The black market in stolen art and archaeological artifacts is at the heart of this story, because the page naturally attracts the attention from both criminals and the law. A case that also involves a rumored, hitherto unknown copy of the Gutenberg Bible locked away in a safety deposit box.

So a really fun story, but, plot-wise, impossible to spoil as the story introduces Mau Sugal with the ending revealing and setting her up as an antagonist to Shinra – more like a good natured frenemy. Mau Sugal returns in the next story.

"Spirit of the Forest," second and last story of vol. 5, sees Sugal coming back to Shinra's museum ("are you here to steal again?"). She wants him to accompany her to the jungles of Borneo to help find someone he knows, Sadaman the herbalist, who "can cure people with his knowledge of the different types of herbs growing in the forest." That talent attracted the attention of the CEO of Navaro Pharmaceuticals, Levy Noble. She saw possibilities to create new medicines to combat the bacteria that start to show immunity to current medicines, but an incident happened. Lloyd Shorts, a plant hunter, accompanied by an investigator, John Baits, were dispatched to make contact with Sadaman, but, on their second meeting, Baits was killed ("...his head was cut off") and Lloyd run into the jungle in a panic – screaming he's "gonna be killed by Sadaman as well." This murder comes with a ghostly impossibility. Right before the body was found, someone saw Baits walking across a bridge and followed him, but only bumped into Lloyd on the other side. And he hadn't seen Baits come by. So a dead man walking inexplicably vanished into thin air!

However, "Spirit of the Forest" is more like one of those character-driven puzzles from Q.E.D. in which the importance is on Shinra trying to find and understand the lessons Shadaman taught him as a kid. Not necessarily the criminal scheme playing out behind the scenes. While the ghostly disappearance on the bridge has a glimmer of originality, the solution represents one of those rare instances where the visual language of manga is not at all complimentary to trick. Normally, they show the still largely untapped potential of visual impossible crimes, but this just looked preposterous. A trick that should have been described and left to the imagination. This has not been a great year for finding gems of locked room mystery and impossible crime story.

So, on a whole, a fun enough, if unchallenging, story which also sums up this fifth volume in toto. Fun but not especially challenging, plotwise. You can write that down to being early in the series and having to introduce and setting up recurring characters and storylines. But fine for getting back into the series after a hiatus.

C.M.B. vol. 6 is made up a single, longish story, "Canopus," digging into Shinra's sometimes tragic background. The story takes place in Cairo, Egypt, where a deranged serial killer is taking a scenic tour of the historic city and generally being a bad guest in a foreign country. First stop of this serial killer is Cairo's Museum of Antiquity where a man is shot, killed and mutilated. Only other thing the killer left behind was a shell casing engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphics. However, the bullet damaged an ancient artifact that had been excavated by Shinra's late mother, Haruna. That brings a distraught Shinra to Cairo to hunt down the shooter who damaged the artifact.

Speaking of Shinra's family, "Canopus" is the other part of the crossover with Q.E.D. that began in "Pharaoh's Necklace" from vol. 28. Shinra and his cousin Sou Touma, along with Kana Mizuhara, happened to be in Cairo at the same time, which means they get to interact and exchange advise. Tatsuki uses the meeting to subtly get more background information on Shinra out of Touma and Mizuhara. Meanwhile, the serial killer continues his murder spree as more mutilated bodies and hieroglyphics shell casing turn up near Egypt's historical landmarks.

So there's plenty going on with enough room to work out the three major plot points. Firstly, the very sad, sometimes brutal backstory of Shinra's relationship with his mother and how he lost her. Secondly, while the serial killer doesn't pose a terribly complicated plot-thread, there's reason to the killer's madness to give it that good, old-fashioned whodunit tug. Thirdly, Shinra playing armchair detective to dispel the countless myths, conspiracy theories and apparent anomalies surrounding the construction of the pyramids – acknowledging his take is “just a hypothesis" with "no tangible evidence." I really enjoyed this segment short as it was! It reminded me of MORI Hiroshi's short story "Sekito no yane kazan" ("The Rooftop Ornaments of Stone Ratha," 1999) in which several armchair sleuths pore over an architectural conundrum from 7th century India. The crossover part simply is a bonus!

C.M.B. vol. 6 is a solid, single story volume doing an admirable job in balancing character-and series building with the various plot-threads, past and present. So probably going to read up to vol. 10, before starting on Q.E.D. iff and alternate between the two series. Stay tuned!

Crossover at the Borders: C.M.B. vol. 19 & Q.E.D. vol. 41 by Motohiro Katou

This took longer than planned, but after a year, or two, I finally arrived at the big crossover event between Motohiro Katou's two flagship series, Q.E.D. and C.M.B., which is an international affair bringing casting both series detectives in the roles of special envoys – dispatching them to my country! Now I know why some of you were so eager for me to get to this crossover event.

A crossover event officially beginning in Q.E.D. vol. 41, "Special Envoy of Balkia," but you don't necessarily have to read them order. More on that in a moment.

"Special Envoy of Balkia" centers around ex-president Suami Gareth, of the fictitious Republic of Balkia in eastern Europe, who's primary interest was "hoarding illegal wealth" in smuggled diamonds, money laundering and other criminal activities – which resulted in economic sanctions. So the Republic of Balkia rapidly descended into social unrest and ultimately a short, but bloody, civil war ("he shot his own citizens") killing over thirty thousand people. President Suami Gareth left behind "destroyed buildings and overflowing graves" as he escaped the country. Fortunately, the Belgian police arrested him.

So the new president of the Balkia Republic, Mantley Coudan, requested the ex-president to be extradited to stand trial in Balkia. However, the Belgian authorities refuse to hand him over and intend to hold the trial themselves, because of the danger his return to the country poses. The ex-president still has a lot armed loyalists with a diamond crammed war chest, which could reignite the conflict. And they don't believe Balkia is capable of holding a trial in its current state. Balkia disagrees, "it infringes on our sovereignty," who take the dispute to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands! Sou Touma is asked to represent and argue in the court on behalf of Balkia, while the group representing the Belgium is headed by Touma's cousin, Sakaki Shinra, from C.M.B. Yes, it's kind of awesome to see both of them wandering around my country. Netherlands mentioned!

Now this is where the story becomes a little tricky to discuss, because this crossover is a tale of two identical (copy and paste) stories with diverging endings. The first-half of the C.M.B. part of this crossover, "The Arrested President Affair," is practically identical as it copy/pastes the backstory from "Special Envoy of Balkia" and Touma's explanation of International Court of Justice – except it's from Shinra's perspective. A notable difference between the two is "The Arrested President Affair" giving a better picture of the crimes Suami Gareth committed during his presidency. Rampant corruption and triggering a civil war is bad enough, but his way of dealing with dissenters was forcing "parents and their children to kill each other." Most of the parents/dissenters killed themselves instead, which he referred to as "that boring incident." A crime deserving the kind of justice that can only be dispensed by a hangman, firing squad or a trip on the Orient Express.

So the two cousins and protagonists, Touma and Shinra, find themselves on opposite sides of the international court. Touma argues for Balkia's sovereign rights to be upheld, while Shinra argues to moral side the president must answer for his crimes and Balkia is not a position to make those guarantees ("Balkia cannot be trusted"). Where the stories differ is not in the conclusion of the hearing, but its aftermath which both take a thriller-ish approach. "Special Envoy of Balkia" ends with an out-and-out, anime-style fight scene with a loyalist faction that spills out to the rooftop of a church. It's sounds as ridiculous as it's fun! "The Arrested President Affair" aims with its ending for an international action thriller tying up several loose ends concerning the missing envoy, missing diamonds and bringing justice to war torn country. And no less fun than the epic battle of the other story.

"Special Envoy of Balkia" and "The Arrested President Affair" is certainly a fun, cross promotional crossover and, typical for these two series, not easily pigeonholed. I don't think you can call it a courtroom drama nor an action thriller in the traditional sense, but it sure was an entertaining way to pit Touma and Shinra against one another. That's also it's major drawback. The overall story would have been less repetitive, more effective and tighter had been told in go, i.e. contained to a single volume. But it something that had to be sacrificed for the cross promotion. What could have been fixed is order of the stories. "The Arrested President Affair" should have come before "Special Envoy of Balkia."

An anonymous comment left on my review of Q.E.D. vol. 37-38 pointed out reading the C.M.B. point of view of the case first is better, because you don't know what Touma thinks or why he's making certain moves – which makes for better storytelling. I agree. So far from a perfect or simply a very good story, even judged as one of Katou Motohiro's unorthodox mysteries, but still found it to be an entertaining one. Crossovers are my guilty pleasure and having one of favorite detective character visit my country is almost personalized fan service. That's probably the best way to sum up this crossover: a fan pleaser.

Hold on a minute, there's more. C.M.B. vol. 19 and Q.E.D. vol. 41 have additional, if minor, stories. C.M.B. opens with two shorter stories, "The Master of Ginza Mugen-Tei" and "Dance the Night Away," which try to emulate the character-driven puzzles of Q.E.D. However, I found neither particular interesting nor memorable. Only notable thing about "The Master of Ginza Mugen-Tei" is how inappropriate it's to ask someone of Shinra's age to probe a such a question. Although some would counter it's equally inappropriate to have a teenagers pawing around the scene of a murder or have them argue cases in the International Court of Justice.

The second story from Q.E.D. vol. 41, "Caff's Memories," is a substantial better, character-driven puzzle, but not the best the series has produced. Story begins with Touma visiting a federal prisoner, Caff Darby, in the United States on behalf of his wife. Lin Darby once was a successful fortune who brought her husband fame and fortune, "investor with God's Eye," who studied and wholly believed in her predictive powers ("Lin's predictions have come true 95% of the time"). But his financial windfalls brought him scrutiny from the authorities. And ended up in prison when Lin was wounded during a shooting. So what's Touma supposed to do? The story has an M. Night Shyamalan twist you can see coming the moment Touma slapped down the photograph of the old man on the table, but liked Touma's explanation why he thought Lin could predict the future.

So, yeah, I'm glad to finally have crossed this crossover off the list and continue with the Q.E.D. series, which has nine more volumes. I'll be interspersing them with reviews of C.M.B., until Shinra takes over from Touma on this blog. Rest assured, the reviews of C.M.B. will be interspersed with reviews of Q.E.D. iff. Stay tuned!

Stuff of Legends: C.M.B. vol. 3-4 by Motohiro Katou

Yes, I know, I know. The plan was to have gotten well on the way towards Q.E.D. vol. 50 and the crossover with C.M.B. out of the way, which once again got sidetracked, but this time I have a scapegoat an excuse – namely the "New Locked Room Library." So you can blame Alexander for organizing that massive distraction. That was last year. I intend to pick up where I left off with last years reviews of C.M.B. vol. 1-2 and Q.E.D. vol. 39-40 with a review of C.M.B. vol. 3-4, before finally tackling the crossover event between these sibling series. I recommend taking a look at the review of the first two volumes, if you need a refresher what this series is about.

The first of two stories from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 3, "Lost Relief," centers on the three rings, "C," "M," and "B," the three curators of the British Museum gifted to their 14-year-old apprentice, Sakaki Shinra. Whomever possesses one of the rings can count on plenty of funding and unfettered access to normally restricted archives for their research, archaeological digs or building up a collection or museum. So giving all three rings to one person, let alone a teenager, is unprecedented in the 200 year old tradition.

"Lost Relief" introduces a rival for the young museum curator and amateur detective in Shaw Bentley, head of research at the British Museum, who believes Professor Stan, Professor Ray and Professor Morris had no right to hand the rings over Shinra ("those rings have been demoted to a toy for some kid in the east"). So "the youngest researcher in history" is determined to pry one of the rings, but the only way to officially come into possession of a ring is if Shinra gifts him one. Shaw travels to Japan to visit Shinra at his hidden museum to propose a sporting challenge for one of his rings. A month ago, a ship was intercepted with a cargo of stolen historical artifacts, en route to a shady collector, which included a stone relief illustrating an Aztec sacrificial ceremony – except the part depicting the part of the altar has gone missing. Smugglers claimed it was complete, but when it arrived at the Japanese warehouse for inspection, the altar piece was missing.

Shaw proposes that the first one to find the missing piece wins. If he finds it, Shinra has to give him one of the rings, but if Shinra finds it first, Shaw will give him a solid gold statue he found in Columbia for his museum. Shinra even sweetens the deal with a challenge of his own. In case the missing piece isn't found, but Shaw can deduce what's depicted on top of the altar, Shinra will accept defeat. This story is obviously intended to introduce the characters of Shaw Bentley and his bratty, personal chef, Linda, while filling in some of the details of Shinra's backstory. That being said, the problem of the missing relief piece is not half bad and, more importantly, perfectly solvable for the keen-eyed armchair detective. So a good, fun opener of the third volume.

By the way, Shaw called Shinra's museum "a warehouse of trash" that's "full of strange children's junk," which is not true, but also betrays a body without a romantic bone in it and perhaps even lacking a soul. I would love to climb a tree to get into Shinra's museum (it's only entrance/exit) to roam around all those displays with ancient artifacts or horsey-ride the Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

The second story of this volume, "Modern Legend," is one of those strange, character-driven, human-shaped puzzle stories I have come to associate with Q.E.D. A story playing on Japanese urban legends like "Hanako-san of the Toilet" or "The Slit-Mouthed Woman."

Meiyuu Private High School becomes a hotbed for gruesome, terrifying urban legends about bodies being found in horrific circumstances ("a dead body found in the mountains... a body beaten by the branches of a willow... and a body buried in a bamboo grove..."). Shinra sets his classmate searching for the person behind the urban legends when he suggested the stories might have originated from one and the same person. This leads them to the crusty owner of a music store, his shed and talk about a bone-colored boat. But is he's hiding some horrific crime inside that shed? Meanwhile, Nanase Tatsuki, the Kana Mizuhara to Shinra's Sou Touma, learns more about Shinra's family and circumstances. And at the same time trying to civilize socialize him. Another good, fun little mystery with an interesting solution (ROT13: gung'f bar jnl gb fraq fbzrbar n zrffntr, V fhccbfr), but not as solvable (for western readers anyway) as the previous one with the spotlight being on Shinra's character and background. It was really sad seeing Shinra cleaning his museum, open its doors and waiting for visitors who never came. But a good story to close out this volume.

C.M.B. vol. 4 comprises of a single, long story, "Judean Fortune," which is best described as Dan Brown getting the shin honkaku treatment. A international despite has arisen from a potential discovery in the Roman Colosseum, Italy, which was called in by special investigator working on historical sites. A special investigator working for the not so catchy named Private Historical Site Investigation Company, run by Jamie Charles, who was hired by Israel to investigate certain claims regarding a mysteries treasure. Her investigator called in to report he had actually found the treasure, "a Judean treasure," but got himself killed in the ruins of the Colosseum under very mysterious, borderline impossible, circumstances – impaled through the chest with a trident. The place where he was murdered makes it incredibly difficult to effectively wield a trident as a murder weapon. Even if he was attacked from above. Not a full-blown locked room murder, but enough to make for an intriguing howdunit with a visually pleasing solution. The victim also left something that functions as a dying message regarding the treasure.

However, the case started a diplomatic incident between Italy, Israel, the Vatican and the Knights of Malta. So the British Museum is assigned with the investigation as a neutral, third party and they delegated the investigation to the keeper of the three CMB rings. Shinra nearly causes another international incident when he initially refuses the assignment, but agrees when he gets to bring Nanase Tatsuki along to Italy.

"Judean Fortune" basically is "Lost Relief" on a much bigger, grander scale and pretty fun adventure mystery with a couple of clever touches. Most notably, the solution to the quasi-impossible murder at the ruins which has a solution that's just perfect for the visual detective story. There's a second, quasi-impossible situation when they get attacked at night in the streets of Rome by an ax-wielding knight in armor, but, when the police investigates the site of the attack the next day, no strike marks from the ax are found on the walls. Neither are full-blown impossible crimes, but once again, they make for a couple of visually appealing howdunits. The historical plot-thread about the long-lost, hidden treasure has an answer of epic historical proportions with potential world destabilizing consequences. So it ends with (ROT13) gur jubyr guvat trggvat pbirerq onpx hc, but nothing to take away from this extremely fun, richly-plotted historical adventure mystery. Although it cannot be denied that the rich plot would have been more at home in a Ruritanian setting than one resembling the real world.

So have now read the first four volumes, but think I can see the most important difference between C.M.B. and Q.E.D. Katou used the shonen manga format in Q.E.D. as a vehicle for the detective story and the detective story as a vehicle for a shonen manga in C.M.B., if that makes any sense. Which is why Q.E.D. feels more grounded and realistic compared to C.M.B. with its less than realistic premise and a protagonist who's the personification of Peter Pan Syndrome. Sou Touma is just an introverted math genius and teenage detective. You remember the type from high school. But both series compliment each other splendidly. And fascinating how they both use their premises and medium to find new ways to tell a good, old-fashioned detective stories. So very much look forward to their big crossover story, finishing Q.E.D. and exploring C.M.B. further in the near future.

Welcome to the Wünderkammer: C.M.B. vol. 1-2 by Motohiro Katou

Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. is a companion to his Q.E.D. series starring Sou Touma's younger cousin, Sakaki Shinra, who's an orphan, of sorts, spending his childhood in England as a ward of three secretive curators of the British museum – gifting him three rings bearing the letters "C," "M," and "B." The letters could be the initials of the blessing Christus Mansionem Benedicat or of the names of Three Magi. History is not, exactly, clear on that matter. However, the rings provide Shinra with plenty of financial funds to do research and collect items for his museum. In addition to providing a certain level of authority to those who understand what it means to possess not one, but all three, rings.

A 14-year-old Shinra returned to Japan to start his museum, or wünderkammer, on the second-floor of a building, which is practically inaccessible except by climbing a tree branch leading to the balcony ("...entrance way got blocked off"). Just like his cousin, Shinra has a knack for cracking complicated, seemingly impossible problems and puzzles. So has to play detective, from time to time, but Shinra asks an admission fee to hear his solution. This is usually an item connected to the case or simply visiting his museum. It should be noted that the main difference between the two series is the subject matter. Q.E.D. has characters and plots couched in science, math and engineering, C.M.B. is more concerned with archaeology, anthropology and biology.

C.M.B. was originally serialized from 2005 to 2020 in Monthly Shonen Magazine and collected in 45 volumes, which appear to have started out following the same structure as Q.E.D. with two complete stories in each volume. From what I spotted, there are several volumes early on in the series comprising of one long story and more volumes apparently consisting of multiple, shorter stories – unless they're chapter titles to the same story. I'll find out soon enough.

"Mimicry" is the story opening the first C.M.B. volume and introduces the reader to the second lead character of the series, Nanase Tatsuki. A tomboy-ish student of Meiyuu Private High School, run by her illustrious grandfather, who's destined to play the Kana Mizuhara to Shinra's Sou Touma. It begins with a deadly incident in the biology class room of the school. Someone, presumably the biology teacher Tazaki, spontaneously combusted into flames and left behind a pile of ashes with two partially in tact arms sticking out. However, the arms prove the victim is not the missing biology teacher and now primary suspect. Tazaki happens to be the brother of one of her friends and classmate. What's more, Tatsuki spots a strange boy sitting on a tree branch opposite the biology class room with a pair of binoculars. So immediately begins to pursue him.

Tatsuki's chase ends when she finds the entrance to Shinra's museum to confront him, but Shinra claims he has nothing to do with the incident and invited her to return to his museum soon. Tatsuki continues to help her friend trying to figure out what happened to her brother in the hopes of proving his innocence, which eventually brings her right back to the museum. While he had nothing to the spontaneous combustion case, Shinra tells her Tazaki wanted to show him a rare butterfly from his collection. But never kept his appointment. Shinra offers to solve the case in exchange for the rare butterfly as an entrance fee to his wünderkammer (i.e. solution).

First of all, "Mimicry" is a setup story tasked with introducing the characters and setting up the premise of the series, before attention can be given to the individual plots. So the plot is not terribly complicated, however, I appreciated the solution to the spontaneous human combustion problem. I'm not sure SHC counts as an impossible crime without it being witnessed or happening in a locked room, but the method sure feels like a typical, shin honkaku-style impossible crime-trick – which deserved to be used in a story with more attention for the plot. Other than that, the introduction and portrayal of Shinra stands out. A genius when it comes to history and biology, but where the normal, everyday world is concerned, Shinra appears to be even more oblivious than his cousin on his first appearance. Shinra has no idea how vending machines work or that you can open a can of Coca Cola without a blowtorch. All in all, a good, fun introduction to the characters and series with a very decent plot to boot.

The next story, "Ghost in the Museum," is another fun, light story in which a nighttime security guard at the Museum of Natural Science has an encounter with the resident ghost. Tachibana Yoshiko hears disembodied sounds of banging, moaning and people crying as the lights begin to flicker. And that begins to take a toll on her. But she needs the job in order to take care of her newborn. Fortunately, Yoshiko knows Tatsuki from their aikido classes. Tatsuki knows a so-called "museum expert" who might be able to help. Shinra is only too pleased at the prospect of visiting a museum and curator is impressed with his knowledge, but astonished when Shinra shows him the three rings ("I never saw them directly, so I thought it was just a legend"). The situation takes a serious turn when that day's earning is stolen from the curator's locked drawer and Yoshiko's job security is in jeopardy.

From the ghostly occurrences in the basement room and their natural explanations to the stolen money, "Ghost in the Museum" reads like something straight out of The Three Investigators series (The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy, 1965) and other similar juvenile mystery series. The solution to the ghostly sounds is a little crude, or would have been in any other story, but here the setting complemented the trick. So a very slight, but fun enough, story with the ending setting up the next story.

The first story of the second C.M.B. volume, "Blue Building," continues setting everything up and introducing an important series regular, Inspector Takeshi Kujirazaki. Inspector Kujirazaki is naturally playing the Inspector Mizuhara, who has a walk-on cameo, to Shinra's Tou Souma.

Kujirazaki is investigating an assault at a four building apartment complex with their sides painted in the colors red, white and blue, but the case is getting nowhere until an anonymous letter arrives, "the culprit of the Blue Building case is the person who lives in the room on the bottom floor on the right side." Meanwhile, Shinra, who has never been to school, is doing an entrance exam and ends up becoming Tatsuki's classmate. Very much to her surprise. Shinra's exam went so well ("his social subjects scores, except for history, were terrible... apart from that, his scores were perfect") that he got tested again in an interview ("...maths, physics and chemistry knowledge is at the same level as a university student... history, geography and biology are even higher than that"). Other than that, there's not much that can be said about the story except that the solution to what the anonymous witness saw seems a better fit for Q.E.D. than C.M.B.

The last story from the second volume, "The Cursed Mask," is a good, old-fashioned and classically-styled locked room mystery and the best story from these first two volumes. Yamagishi Keiko, an ethnologist, turns to Shinra for help concerning a Noh mask with a deadly curse placed on it. The "mud stone" mask represents a woman who has been betrayed and Keiko has been searching for it, which recently resurfaced and man who bought it died of a blood cloth – infuriating his relatives who contacted the police ("...because they believed selling something like that was equal to murder"). Inspector Takeshi consulted Keiko and she turned to Shinra. And she knows someone else died because of that mask fifteen years ago. So the mask is back up for sale with two interested parties. Firstly, the previous seller and antique merchant, Iida Shigekazu. Secondly, the famous Noh dancer, Emoto Seimei. The negotiation takes place at the studio of the artist who sculpted the mask, Awa Saemon, who considers the mask "a failed piece of work" that needs to be destroyed ("my evil intention are attached to that mask"). Shinra, Tatsuki and Keiko travel to the studio to get a glimpse of the mask and to get information, but then the sculptor is found stabbed in his locked studio. Locked from the inside with the only key to the studio found on the victim and undisturbed snow on the outside window sill.

"The Cursed Mask" is an excellent shin honkaku locked room mystery in miniature reading like a modern take on Akimitsu Takagi's recently discussed Nomen satsujin jiken (The Noh Mask Murder, 1949). The locked room-trick is simple, but elegant, satisfying and brazenly clued. It's daringly alluded to before the murder is committed and discovered, which is the hallmark of every great detective story. Not merely a sound one. Even better is the backstory of the cursed mask and how it's very existence actually ended up destroying a man all those years before. A great story to close out this first excursion into the C.M.B. series and an early contender for that future post "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's C.M.B. vol. 1-25" (see my Q.E.D. version).

So the crossover from Q.E.D. vol. 41 and C.M.B. vol. 19 is getting closer and the current plan is to do Q.E.D. vol. 39-40 and C.M.B. vol. 3-4 next, before finally tackling that long anticipated crossover. Stay tuned!

Broken Pieces: Q.E.D. vol. 27-28 by Motohiro Katou

This series needs no introduction and there have been enough excessively padded blog-posts lately. So let's jump right in.

Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 27 begins with an inconspicuous gem, "Mirror Image," in which
Kana Mizuhara roped Sou Touma into cycling her around town and bring lunch to her father, Inspector Mizuhara – who's investigating a suspicious house fire. A fire had burned through the second floor of a house that had stood abandoned since the previous owner died. This brings what should have been a recurring character into the story, Sakuma Toyokichi, who's a crime scene investigator and "an expert in fire scenes." Toyokichi is going to retire the next day and so the fire in the abandoned house is the last time he'll be sifting through the ashes of a potential crime scene, which he does with decades of experience behind him. Toyokichi brought along a group of rookie investigators to instruct ("don't go into the scene with preconceptions"), demonstrates his ability to identify burned or molten pieces of debris ("he's like a dictionary") and pinpointing the origin of the fire with a bucket of water. I really liked how this old crime scene investigator contrasts and complimented the young amateur detective. Touma is a teenage math prodigy who not always willingly has to play the amateur (armchair) detective and reasons the truth from often abstract clues, while old Toyokichi is an experienced hand whose job simply "is to collect evidence." They worked very well together which brings us to the puzzle component of the story.

There are four suspects to consider, as they were the only people with keys to the house, which include the twin daughters of the late home owner, Reiko and Hanako, who were separated when their parents divorced. Reiko went with her father and Hanako with her mother. So they lived entirely different lives and furthered the effect of being mirror images of each other. They both have a mole on their chin, but Reiko's mole is on her right side and Hanako has one on her left "as they were mirror images of each other," but Hanako, unlike her sister, suffered many financial hardships while living with her mother. So they never really got along and naturally accuse each other. But how does it all relate to the fire? Touma reasons that "behind this case there is a problem not behind the difference of left and right, but it is hidden within the problem of front and back." What follows is a chain of deductions that first exonerates all four suspects, before demonstrating what logically must have happened. Brilliantly reasoned!

So the story is a character-driven character piece, which has to be pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, but an extremely clever and well done character piece. More importantly, "Mirror Image" is a great example that good detective fiction does not always have to depend tropes and tricks like cast-iron alibis, dying messages, impossible crimes or even something as simple as a body. You can do away with all of these and still produce excellent detective fiction, but, as Q.E.D. has demonstrated countless of times, it requires an appreciation and understanding what makes a detective story trick – something of a series specialty. And the next story is another experimental one.

The second story, "Burden of Proof," mixes high school theatrics and social studies with courtroom dramatics. A mock trial is staged at the school of Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to familiarize students with the new court and jury system. A lottery is going to randomly pick six names of students who have to sit on the jury and both were drawn for jury duty. The case of the mock trial is a simple one: Toyokawa Tsuneo stands accused of assaulting a woman, Azuma Sachiko, and robbed her of 150,000 yen. The prosecutor presents the jury with a string of circumstantial evidence with the defense showing why there's a difference between direct and circumstantial evidence, which the jurors have to weigh and decide if there's enough to prove the accused is guily beyond reasonable doubt. Touma points out towards the end, "the burden of proof falls entirely on the prosecution" and "the jurists may only make their decision based on the presented evidence." This gives the story a loophole to cheat without actually cheating as the trial is an entirely different matter, legally, than the solution Touma provides at the end ("the prosecution overlooked one possibility").

So, conceptually, "Burden of Proof" is an interesting story, but not nearly as good, or memorable, as the first story. Another excellent and solid volume with two great stories that continued to look for new ways to tell a detective story.

Q.E.D. vol. 28 starts with an archaeological mystery, "Pharaoh's Necklace," which incidentally became my backdoor introduction to Q.E.D.'s companion series C.M.B. Someone warned awhile ago that a crossover story is imminent, but it had simply slipped my mind and now all those plans so carefully laid out in the review of volumes 25 and 26 have come under threat. I really, really want to read C.M.B. now, but first things first. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara travel to Cairo, Egypt, where an acquaintance from his university days in America discovered a new tomb in the northern part of the Valley of the Kings. Thomas Potter, an archaeologist, tumbled into a tomb containing two mummies and the female mummy has royal necklace around her neck. So it has to be a royal mummy, but, before the untouched tomb can be thoroughly investigated, Potter is struck down by falling rocks – landing him in the hospital. Now he has the sponsor of the excavation on his back and called on Touma to take his place as a favor ("but... this is out of my field"). Touma accepting the assignment confronts him with two mysteries from the past and present.

Why was there a royal necklace in a tomb that appears to have been a commoner's tomb? Why does everyone involved in the excavation keep having unfortunate accidents? Since archaeology is outside of his expertise, Touma calls upon his cousin from his mother's side, Sakaki Shinra, who's the protagonist of C.M.B. and happened to be in Egypt to handle a murder case at the Museum of Antiquities. A story from C.M.B. vol. 6 in which Mizuhara lends him a helping hand in solving that murder. But here, Shinra helps Touma by inspecting the necklace and concludes it's genuine enough. Just completely out-of-time for the date of the tomb in which it was found. The solution to this historical conundrum, simplicity itself, proved to be much better than the contemporary problem of the dig-side accidents. Touma's hypothesis about the two mummies, differing states of preservation, presence of a royal necklace and the sealed entrance is well reasoned and provided a satisfying, if bitter sweet, answer to those ancient questions. That alone is sufficient to make "Pharaoh's Necklace" a personal favorite, but loving crossovers and archaeological mysteries almost as much as impossible crimes and unbreakable alibis also helped a lot. So, on a whole, a pretty good and fun little story!

 

Regrettably, I can't say the same of the second and last story, "Human Firework," which reads like a modern retelling of Edogawa Rampo as a psychological crime story. The story concerns drawing in a sketchbook depicting the body of a woman in various stages of decomposition. Touma compares the sketches to a certain type of Buddhist painting, kusoshi emaki, which "consists of nine parts starting from when someone died until the body decomposes" to make death easier for people to understand, but the sketches look new – like they were drawn "while observing a real body." But do these disturbing possess the power to change someone's behavior? The crux of the story is people who got swallowed by their own darkness. Q.E.D. has a great track record when it comes to making these off-beat, often experimental stories work, but "Human Firework" is not one of them. And perhaps it was the wrong story to follow "Pharaoh's Necklace." But who am I to complain? One out of four stories, spread across two volumes, left me underwhelmed, which is not a bad score at all. So, all things considered, another splendid demonstration why Q.E.D. is the 21st century detective story.

A note for the curious: "Burden of Proof" officially broke the series timeline and continuity. Q.E.D. started out in the late nineties with vol. 2, 3, 4 and 5 covering the period from 1998 to 1999 with vol. 6 taking place days before New Year. After that, the timeline and continuity got a bit blurry, but those earliest stories clearly took place during the late '90s and early '00s. "Burden of Proof" is set in 2007! So, if you follow the original timeline, Touma and Mizuhara should be in their mid-twenties. You tried, Katou. You tried.