The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 26-50

I reviewed the first volume, of fifty, in Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. series back in 2018, reached the halfway mark (vol. 25) in May 2023 and posted "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. Vol. 1-25" a few months later – intending to have part two up by the end of 2024. You know how it goes with even the most vaguely stated, flexible of "deadlines" on this blog. I'm a traditionalist, if there ever was one. That being said, if my track through the first-half of this series was done at a snail's pace, the second-half was a sprint to the finish. Only a little a year and a half to get from vol. 26 to vol. 50. So not bad by my standards!

I reached vol. 50 last month and having reviewed every volume in addition to several specials, crossovers and sampling its sister series, C.M.B., Katou and his cast of regulars hardly need an introduction. Neither do I need to go over the points on why I started calling Q.E.D. the detective story for the 21st century. I have regurgitated all that over, and over, again in previous reviews. Just read the top 10 vol. 1-25 for a short introduction. I'll take a moment to go over the selection process.

This time, picking ten favorites was not as easy as the first time. I simply started compiling a list to whittle down to ten stories, but ended up with seventeen stories and kept moving them around between the candidate list and the final list – every story made the top 10 at one point. I wanted the list to reflect the scope of variety across this series. One thing I rarely mentioned is how Q.E.D. found a way to combine the advantages of a long-running series (familiarity) with the creative freedom afforded by standalones. So the stories and plots cover everything from traditionally-plotted whodunits, impossible crimes and alibi crackers to character explorations, slice-of-life mysteries and down right experimental fiction. And pretty much everything in between. You know me... there's always the risk I'll jump on my hobby horse and do a "Top 10 Favorite Locked Room Mysteries & Impossible Crimes from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D.," but managed to keep temptation at bay. I think I weeded out a fairly representative top 10 list from my original seventeen picks, which get an honorable mention at the end. Even if they didn't make the final cut, they're still technically top 10 material.

Before tumbling down the top 10, I want to assure those who don't care about Katou, Q.E.D. or manga mysteries in general, you'll be getting a break from them after this one. I don't think I'll get to Gosho Aoyama's Case Closed, vol. 94 until sometime next month. I'll pick something a little different as a palate cleanser, before returning to C.M.B. or starting with Q.E.D. iff. So with all that poorly done blog-padding out of the way, let's begin.

 

"Summer Time Capsule" (vol. 26)

The first entry on this list appears on first sight to be minor stuff, a slice-of-life mystery, centering on a time capsule unearthed by construction workers with Kana Mizuhara's name on the lid – buried during her primary school days. Mizuhara's memories of her primary school days have already become hazy and the contents of the capsule poses a big mystery to her. Such as a group photograph with a kid neither she nor her friends remember. Mizuhara begins to suspect she might have done something very bad. Not to mention a mini-puzzle hidden inside the narrative. Where the story sets itself apart is using a simple, innocent childhood mystery to show how time ravages the memory, because you can't recall every single second of your life. So you leave more of yourself in the past than you take into the future. As an anonymous comment on my review pointed out, "Summer Time Capsule" is one of the best human drama mysteries in this series.

"Motive and Alibi" (vol. 29)

This second entry represents Q.E.D. at its most traditional and conventional, but an absolutely first-rate, classically-style whodunit. Sou Touma becomes involved in the murder of a celebrated, award winning painter, Kuromame Fukuzo, who's murdered at his home surrounded by three potential suspects. Only problem is that they possess rock solid, unshakable alibis. The murderer has every reason to be confident in their alibi, but Touma spotted a contrived set of circumstances that created a "golden window of opportunity" for murder. Even better than the ingenious and original alibi trick is how Touma's explanation built on Inspector Mizuhara's evidence and bare-bones solution. I like it when the brainy amateur and experienced, casehardened professional actually compliment each other.

"Magic & Magic" (vol. 32)

Similar to the first entry, "Magic & Magic" is one of the best character-piece this series has to offer and my personal favorite. Kurohoushi Manto, a magician, overhears Touma explaining his tricks to Mizuhara during a performance and proposes a challenge to the teenage know-it-all – wanting an opportunity to genuinely surprise Touma. A wonderful story full with magic tricks and the seemingly impossible disappearance of a book from a locked and guarded safe. However, the locked safe trick and magic trick is not the main draw of the story, but Manto's demonstrating there's a small, essential difference between fooling someone and surprising them. Bravo Katou!

"The Detective Novelist Murder Case" (vol. 33)

A return to the traditionally-styled detective story centering on a group of four published mystery writers discussing a plot idea for the perfect crime, a murder disguised as a domestic accident, but how's the murderer going to leave the scene locked from the inside? Someone obviously found an answer when one of them dies in exactly the same circumstances as they discussed and examined. Only difference is that all the doors and windows were found locked and securely fastened. What makes this story standout is the elegant, brilliant simplicity of the original locked room-trick and Touma not only revealing who, why and how, but also showing why the other suspects couldn't have done it. A detective story with a high purity plot!

"Christmas Present" (vol. 35)

Despite the story title, "Christmas Present" is not a seasonal mystery with the December festivities serving as background decoration for a clever piece of genre parody, playfully poking the shin honkaku mystery in the ribs – staged and presented as mock theatrical mystery. The notorious Detective Club of Sakisaka High School helps out making up the numbers of the Drama Club to prevent their Christmas Show from getting canceled, but under condition they stage a mystery play. Touma and Mizuhara naturally get put to work with the former having to write a script on the spot. Touma comes up with Murder at the Pentagon House about a murder in a small, pentagon-shaped house with the door and windows locked on the inside. While being tongue-and-cheek, the locked room-trick is actually quite clever and original. A trick that can actually be used in a comedy mystery play. So really fun and successful parody of the shin honkaku mystery.

"The Incident in Urban Hills Room 6" (vol. 39)

I constantly moved this story back and forth between the candidate list and the final list, before deciding to keep it in the final ten. This story takes place at a shabby, rundown lodging house where the landlady was found hanging in the titular room, dismissed by the police as a suicide. But left the place with a stigma as nobody wanted to apply for the job of housekeeping. One day, Mizuhara appears on their doorstep to take the position and immediately begins to asking questions, which she relies to Touma playing armchair detective in the background. However, this story is not nearly as conventional as it sounds and, like said in my original review, somewhat of an anti-detective story that's not really an anti-detective story at all. I really liked how Touma showed none of tenants have a motive only to turn around and show why one of those non-motives is a motive for murder.

"Secret Room No. 4" (vol. 40)

This entry undeniably is dictated by my personal obsession taste for locked room mysteries and every other kind of impossible crime fiction under the sun. Touma, Mizuhara and the members of the Sakisaka High School Detective Club partake in a test run for murder game, based on the works of a well-known mystery novelist, on behalf of the tour company – which brings them to the perfect setting for a murder, Sasakure Island. A game consisting of various locked room puzzles challenging the players to find out how the crime was carried out, not whodunit or why. Not unexpectedly, the test game is interrupted by an actual locked room murder. There are a total of four locked room mysteries in this story and an argument can be made Touma's solution revealed a fifth, neatly hidden, impossible crime. While not all the locked room-tricks carry that brand new car smell, they're brilliantly employed together to create a special treat for impossible crime fans like me.

"Tuba and Grave" (vol. 44)

The three disaster magnets of the Sakisaka High School Detective Club again get themselves into serious trouble when they foolishly mistook a sleeping drunk for a murder victim with their wildly incorrect, ludicrous deductions. So they find themselves in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation when witnessing an actual murder and the body being hidden inside an abandoned, rundown factory. They call in an anonymous tip to the police who search the place from top to bottom, which include a freshly dug, filled-in hole and a tuba case. No murder victim is discovered. So they turn to Touma and Mizuhara to help them out of another hole. A really fun story, but the plot is great as well with an even better conclusion. Touma basically turns what appears to be the problem of an impossibly disappearing body into an inverted, Columbo-style breakdown of the murderer's alibi and trapping the killer with incriminating knowledge.

"Pilgrimage" (vol. 46)

Q.E.D. is not exactly a cozy mystery series, but neither is it excessively dark or disturbing and tends to find a happy balance between the darker and lighter sights of life. Usually done in colors rather than shades of gray. Not this unsettling, pitch-black story centering on a long-forgotten incident dating back to World War II. A forgotten incident rediscovered inside an unpublished manuscript from a dead non-fiction author with some cryptic words scribbled on the cover. Why did the husband of a murder victim traveling to Hanoi, under wartime to conditions, to confront the murderer court decided halfway through the journey to continue on foot? Why did he, following a track of 1000 km on foot, arrive at the court two months later to asked the court to spare his wife's killer by commuting his death sentence to a prison sentence? Why did it fail to save the killer? A story deceptively starting out as a human interest story with a dash of Chestertonian wonder, but the ending revealed a nightmarish horror plucked from the pages of of an Edgar Allan Poe or Edogawa Rampo tale.

"Escape" (vol. 50)

I realize I should have swapped this entry with any of the honorable mentions listed below, but enjoyed vol. 50 too much to not include one of its two stories. I decided to go with "Escape" over the global spectacle that's “Observation,” because enjoyed the former slightly more. A fun combination of the locked room mystery with a mystery thriller. Touma and Mizuhare receive an anonymous request and money to organize a private escape room game for a small group of people, but the participants soon find themselves trapped inside as a bomb is ticking down the minutes. This situation is tied to an unsolved, sixteen year old locked room murder dismissed at the time as a suicide. Three things make this story standout: the reason for staging the escape game, the original locked room-trick for a padlocked door and a plot unfolding itself through the escape game. Touma and Mizuhara have little else to do other than being impartial observers. Leave it to Katou to find a way to be unconventional in a conventional locked room mystery.

Honorable Mentions from the Cutting Room Floor: "Pharaoh's Necklace" (vol. 28), "Promise" (vol. 31), "Paradox Room" (vol. 33), "Empty Dream" (vol. 38), "Escher Hotel" (vol. 42), "The Representative" (vol. 48) and "Observation" (vol. 50).

Boundary Reached: Q.E.D. vol. 50 by Motohiro Katou

I started reading Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. in 2018 and over the years, despite some prolonged hiatuses and ill-fated restarts, it not only became one of my favorite manga mystery series, but one of my favorite detective series in general – regardless of medium or form. A new kind of traditional detective story for the 21st century and should have finished it years ago, because you would think the locked downs from a few years ago would have helped. But no. Well, I promised to have this series done, dusted and in the books before summertime rolls around. And here we are with time to spare.

Fittingly, I'll end this run how it started with a single review of the last volume. The last two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 50 present not only a return to form, but feel like a return to the stories from the earlier volumes with one subtle little difference. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara look slightly older than they were at the beginning of the series.

The first story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Observation," draws on Sou Touma's time as a teenage prodigy at MIT where he met another young genius, Sally Blythe. Years later, she has become the head of a company manufacturing instruments for observational experiments, "Blythe Inc. is pretty famous," but her company is being targeted by, what can only be called, an invisible enemy – who carries out seemingly impossible acts of sabotage globally. Providing the story with some recognizable and famous backdrops. First stop is the Large Hadron Collider, on the border between France and Switzerland, where an unknown intruder switched switched off the flow of liquid helium forcing a shut down. However, the intruder was caught on the CCTV and surrounded by two groups guards inside the circular tunnel. When the two groups bumped into each other, the intruder simply had vanished without a trace! A second and similar act of sabotage occurred at the Mauna Kea Observatories, in Hawaii, where the cooling process was interrupted during an observational experiment. But how did the culprit managed to tamper with equipment that had been securely locked and sealed away for ten days? The saboteur strikes again at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan by placing radioactive radium ore beside an underground detector.

Sally Blythe turns to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to not only help figure out how the culprit managed to sabotage their experiments, but who's behind it all and why. So we get a nicely-layered, intelligently plotted detective story and human touch to the characterization. Not black and white or shades of gray as exemplified by the ending, which is neither a happy ending nor a depressingly dark conclusion. Just something human under less than ordinary circumstances. I really enjoyed the various impossible situations perhaps showing the influence of MORI Hiroshi and novels like Tsumetai misshitsu to hakase tachi (Doctors in the Isolated Room, 1996).

I think most of you already have a pretty good idea how the saboteur disappeared from the LHC. You would be particle partially correct, however, Katou pleasantly elaborated on that basic idea to create something more fitted for its special setting. The locked room-trick at the Mauna Kea Observatories is far more original, but not easily solvable for your average armchair detective. Even with a devious hint to its solution being dropped in your lap. Despite it being somewhat of a specialized locked room, I really liked it and appreciated its novelty. The sabotage at the Kamioka Observatory is not really a locked room problem, but serves another well-done purpose to the overall plot. So an all-round excellent opener to the final volume!

The second and last story of Q.E.D. vol. 50, "Escape," reads like a season finale adding thrills as frills to a good, old-fashioned and cleverly contrived locked room mystery.

"Escape" opens with a flashback, "16 years ago," to a warehouse used by an unnamed child as a secret hideout to read his favorite adventure series, Adventures of Brave, the Knight, but, one day, an intruder enters the barn – casually stringing up a body before leaving. This intruder leaves the barn locked from the inside with a padlock. The child disappears from the barn just as mysteriously, but not before taking the ring from the hanging body. So the police at the time are confronted with what appears to be a suicide inside a locked barn. So the case grew cold and was forgotten, until Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara receive an anonymous request and money to organize an Escape Room game. A game organized for the benefit of a small party made up of an ex-policeman, a fortune teller, a food sales executive, a mangaka (manga author) and a part timer.

All five received a personal invitation to take part in the game with an opportunity to win one million yen, but the mini-puzzles prove to be too cerebral for the participants. Suspicion rises when items like an old ring and a copy of Adventures of Brave, the Knight turn up in the game. And, eventually, the game becomes a dangerous one as they find themselves locked inside the labyrinth with a time bomb counting down the minutes they have left to escape. Even though it has been done before, the reason behind staging the escape game is still very clever indeed and wonderfully presented/executed through the escape game setup.

 

 

The solution to the locked room murder from 16 years ago deserves a special mention, because the trick offers something entirely new when it comes to impossible crimes in padlocked rooms or buildings. I'm sure I mentioned this somewhere before, quite recently, but the reason why padlocked rooms are even rarer than "taped tombs" is because padlocks are too unreliable, and too limited, for a proper locked room mystery. They're wide open to being picked, replaced or swapped around. So you won't find much scope or depth in the trickery in the, what, half a dozen known examples. That makes the locked room-trick here so refreshing and surprising, because it found a new way to get out of padlocked room.

I should also note here Touma has very little to do here, except help setting up the escape room and act as an impartial observer as the plot unfolds itself. Typical for this series to give its protagonist a passive role in its closing act. Nothing to detract from this splendid and fun locked room thriller. So, overall, a very strong volume to end this series on. Somewhat of an open ending, perhaps, to the series and characters, but this is, of course, not the end of the road for Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara – both of whom will return in Q.E.D. iff. I look forward to digging into that series, but first have to begin slapping together part two of "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. Vol. 1-25." I'll probably take a palate cleanser before returning to C.M.B. and starting on Q.E.D. iff, which might even include a return to The Kindaichi Case Files. Stay tuned!

Memory Fail: Q.E.D. vol. 47-49 by Motohiro Katou

The first, of two, stories from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Sun is Still Blazing," takes place at a secret and highly secured NSA research on a remote, isolated island near Indonesia – where an important file with research data went missing. And ended up destroyed. Only problem is that the research facility is tightly secured and closely scrutinized suggesting an inside job.

Was it the somewhat eccentric head researcher and "world-renowned expert in math and logic," Kurt Gidel? Or one of three members of his research staff, Carlos Balma, Walter Chapman and Judith Grey? Considering the stolen and destroyed data included sensitive, classified information, it was decided to hold an internal investigation in order to close the case as soon as possible. Sou Touma was asked to act as an independent investigator with Kana Mizuhara tagging along to the remote Indonesian island.

The theft of the file is something of an impossible crime. It apparently went missing in the meeting room, tightly secured, where Gidel and his staff gather to discuss ideas and work out problems on a blackboard. Gidel was sitting next to the backboard to listen to his staff members and judge their ideas, while the file rested on the blackboard's ledge. During their last meeting, the black book file was somehow swapped with a dummy file, miraculously smuggled out of the institute and destroyed – even though everyone was thoroughly searched. Another complication to the case is Gidel himself. A genius who only wanted "to sit back and relax at a beautiful island" to solve complicated math problems from a beach chair. He also provides a couple of confusing false-solutions and asks Touma if they were useful. Kana is ready to throttle him when answering, "yes, it was." What's most surprising is how simple, unvarnished and straight forward this story. No grand tricks. Touma's chain of deductions simply answers the three main questions: how was the file swapped, how was it stolen and whodunit with even the equally simple and unvarnished motive being a clue to the culprit's identity. A simple, straightforward, but good and effective little detective story.

Second story of Q.E.D. vol. 47, "The Slope," is surprisingly a Kana Mizuhara-centric story hearkening back to her middle school days when she stood for a bullied classmate, Utagawa Aki. She returned to their first middle school reunion having become a promising young model with rising profile, but she always wanted to know why Kana trusted her unconditionally. Particularly during an embarrassing incident when a stolen video game was found in her desk. Kana was the only one believed in her innocence and stuck up for her, which saved her neck with the teacher. But why? Kana can't remember why she believed her. When Kana goes with a few other old classmates to her apartment an envelope with household money disappears, possibly mislaid by accident. But a thorough search of place turns up exactly nothing.

Kana calls Touma for help and advises her to search the apartment again, but, this time, she has to "search with the assumption that someone has hidden it deliberately" – not simply gotten lost or misplaced. Finding the missing money raises more questions than answers. However, the missing money is only a vehicle to tell Utagawa's backstory and why Kana believed her. A decent enough story, but not nearly as good or memorable as that other Kana Mizuhara-centric story, "Summer Time Capsule," from vol. 26. So, on a whole, these two stories aren't standouts of the series, but put together, they form a pretty solid volume.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 48, "The Representative," begins with a police report of a
break-in at an empty house. When the police came to investigate, they discovered a bizarre scene: the body of man, partially wrapped in tarp, lying in the middle of a room next to an unfinished, half-dug hole in the floor. The victim is Kabuto Shigeki, a representative for authors, who worked for the Orange Copyright Agency. His most well-known client is a reclusive, bestselling author, Semi Ichika, whose Crater Bungee sold over a million copies. Kabuto Shigeki was about to receive the finished manuscript for his next book. Orange Copyright Agency, pressured by his publisher, is eager to get their hands on the manuscript, but Ichika is notoriously difficult to work with. And dislikes most of their staff members ("I tried too hard to impress him..."). So the new, young and completely inexperienced Tento Seiko gets to job of trying to handle and appease Ichika. She's friends with Mizuhara and Sou Touma eventually follows to "solve this series of unfortunate events," but not before another body is added to the tally.

"The Representative" is a really good detective story, nearly an inverted mystery, but there's a pleasing, craftily applied a nearly invisible layer to the whodunit. So to truly solve this story, the armchair detective has to find answer to all the questions. From the murky motive and behavior of the author to the condition in which the first victim was discovered. A possible contender to be included in part two "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D."

The next story, "Fahya's Drawing Book," is undoubtedly a crime/detective story of today's age. It centers on a poor Moroccan child, Fahya, who's teenage cousin, Hamdan, has heard their uncle made a lot of money working in Spain and wants to join him – boarding a ship to smuggle him and others into Europe. Fahya's joins him as a stowaway, where she witnesses a murder from her hiding place, before the ship runs into the coast guard. That confrontation quickly dissolves into a shoot out killing seventeen people aboard the ship, but Fahya an Hamdan made it to the shore. Fahya disappearing from her home and the smuggling vessel has not gone unnoticed.

Alan Blade, the CEO of Alansoft, last appeared in "Disaster Man's Wedding" (vol. 34) when he got married to his secretary, Ellie, who founded a joined charity as part of their wedding gift. They wanted to provide a poor child from Africa with a scholarship to guarantee them an education and Ellie picked (surprise, surprise) Fahya. Alan brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara into the case to help find the little girl, but they're not the only ones looking for her. So an interesting enough premise for modern mystery, but nothing truly interesting emerges from it and feels more like a curiosity than anything else. Although I doubt that was the intention considering it tackles human trafficking, missing children and a shoot out on a boat with nearly twenty casualties. I was especially reminded of, what's perhaps, Edward D. Hoch's worst short story, "The Starkworth Atrocity" (1998), which tried to do something similar with even less impressive results. Sadly, this volume ends with one of the weakest stories in the series.

Regrettably, Q.E.D. vol. 49 is rather weak on a whole, but the first story, "Unrelated Cases," has its moments. Stanley Lau and Sammy Chow are the leaders of two opposing criminal organizations who have decided to meet at a dinner in Hong Kong, but the place is shot up and their bodyguards immediately form a human shield around the two mob bosses. Someone, somehow, shot Sammy Chow through the heart while surrounded by his bodyguards. The shot came from a deserted, dead end alleyway. Some time later in Japan, Tomashino Kyohei, a college student, is roped by his criminally optimistic friend, Sasaki Tatsuoka, to take some money from his workplace to help them along. When the arrive on the 21st floor of a dark, empty building, they discover Lau and his men torturing and killing a man. They managed to escape from the building, but now they have band of gangsters after them. Tomashino Kyohei's younger brother, Haruhiko, asks his school friends, Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara, to help them out.

I said this story has it's moments and there are exactly two. Firstly, the impossible shooting of Sammy Chow in Hong Kong. It's a fine demonstration of the advantages a visual medium like manga (comics) has over prose when dealing with locked room murders, impossible crimes and complicated tricks, because it's just fun to see the murder being carried out during the flashback – fun enough to almost overlook how preposterous the trick really is. I think the trick would have worked better in a less risky, more controlled environment like a theatrical stage or movie set. Secondly, the final confrontation between Touma and Lau. Hardboiled brains, indeed! So not the best story in the series, nor anywhere near the bottom.

"Love Story" closes out Q.E.D. vol. 49 and is another heart-shaped, character-driven puzzles, but not an especially memorable one and struggled to remember anything about it as soon as I finished it. The main gist of the story is an unfinished, 45-year-old movie shot by the movie club of a private college starring a college student who's spitting image of Kana Mizuhara. How very Gosho Aoyama of you, Katou. Nearly half a century, two of the since then married, now elderly club members bump into Kana and the urge is immediately there to finish the movie. Only for the man to die of a heart attack while editing the movie. And he leaves behind some questions. This one just didn't capture my attention. Katou has done these human puzzle stories better before.

So an unfortunate weak ending to the penultimate volume in the series. Even more unfortunate, the overall quality of these three volumes is fairly weak. Only good two stories are "The Sun is Still Blazing" and "The Representative." "The Slope" is a fairly decent character piece and "Unrelated Cases" has, as said before, its moments. But the same can't be said of "Fahya's Drawing Book" or "Love Story." Let's hope I can end this series on an optimistic note with the coming review of Q.E.D. vol. 50.

It's the Numbers That Count: Q.E.D. vol. 44-46 by Motohiro Katou

I ended the review of Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 42-43 with the plan to have this series wrapped before July, which can be done at the current rate in four twofer reviews, but alluded to similar plans and intentions before – rarely panned as originally intended. Going by past results, it probably would have meant a review of vol. 50 wouldn't have materialized until January or February 2026. I'm going to step up with two threefer reviews this month, review vol. 50 next month and tidy it all up with part two to "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25." After that, I'll turn my attention to Motohiro's C.M.B. series interspersed with reviews of Q.E.D. iff. I've not forgotten about that recommendation of the archery-themed murder case from The Gordian Knot series. So that concludes these household notes, unto to the review!

The first, of two, stories from Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 44, "Tuba and Grave," brings back the three disaster magnets of the Sakisaka Private High School Detective Club, Enari "Queen" Himeko, Nagaie "Holmes" Koroku and Morito "Mulder" Orisato.

This time, they caused a minor uproar when mistaking a sleeping drunk, on a park bench, for a victim of foul play with their wildly incorrect deductions ("the suspect is possibly an alien, because we didn't find footprints"). So the "absolute imbeciles" get reprimanded, loose access to their club room for a week and warned their club will be disbanded if they get involved in another incident. Before long, those three find themselves in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation when they witness an actual murder: a man being strangled behind a building and his body dragged into an abandoned factory. They decide to call-in an anonymous tip and the police turns up with the man they recognize as the killer to open the factory, which searched top from bottom starting with a suspicious looking case – containing a tuba. A second, obvious place is what looks like a makeshift grave, but only contained a visually pleasing arranged collection of garbage. Props to the police detective for clearing away the junk to continue digging. No evidence of a body or crime was discovered.

So where could the body have been hidden when the police "turned the entire place upside down and didn't find a thing?" The detective club, once again, turn to Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to bail them out, but Touma tells them the police will figure it out without their help ("...make sure that you behave and get the club back"). His advice falls on deaf ears as the club goes ahead with their own investigation and Mizuhara doing some legwork in the background, until Touma reappears to reveal what really happened at the factory. Touma's solution to the problem turns, what appeared to be an impossible disappearance of a corpse, into a Columbo-style breakdown of the murderer's alibi and ends up hanging him with his own incriminating words.

So a really excellent and entertaining story. Loved the cheekiness of the method even though (ROT13) vg'f abg n ybpxrq ebbz zlfgrel ng nyy, ohg nppvqragnyyl nccrnerq gb or bar qhr gb gur qrgrpgvir pyho'f vagresrerapr. Gur zheqrere bayl jnagrq gb evt hc na nyvov. By the way, I'm starting to develop a soft spot of the Detective Club. They're absolutely useless idiots, but they mean well.

The second story from vol. 44, "Questions," is one of those puzzles-with-a-heart that are scattered across this series. Touma receives a cryptic invitation to a getaway at a luxurious villa. The invitation is a card with the word "QUESTION" on the front and Fermat's Last Theorem on the inside. And he was not the only one to receive an invitation. Several people going through a divorce have gathered at the villa with similar, cryptically-worded invitations. What follows is basically a cross between a treasure hunt and personal journey's of rediscovery. Touma primarily functions as a sideline oracle giving mini-lectures on mathematics, history of mathematical ideas and "an ever-expanding universe of numbers" ("...didn't understand a thing...").

A decent, if not particular memorable, entry in the series and Katou has done better puzzles-with-a-heart stories before. However, the ending admittedly made for a nice finishing touch to this character-driven story.

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 45, "Venus," is a somewhat off-beat whodunit. Himichi Sayaka, a second year college student, is arrested on suspicion of having killed her ex-boyfriend, Mizushima Takuya – a third year student. Mizushima Takuya was found beaten to death in his apartment with door and windows securely locked from the inside, however, Himichi Sayaka has a spare key. She was seen near the apartment at the time of the murder and a bloodied baseball bat was discovered behind her own home. They had been fighting over money he owed her. So the prosecution can prove means, motive and opportunity, but the prosecutor has her doubts and asks Touma to see if he can spot a frame job. Mizuhara remains perplexed important people keep asking Touma for help ("but... this guy is still in high school"). If she has been framed for murder, the crime becomes an impossible one.

This story is, strangely enough, interspersed with comic-y vignettes in which a Venusian space girl, named Serge, teaches a talking raccoon in dungarees about the solar system. I really liked the one panel blending the retelling of how the murder was discovered with a floor plan of the crime scene. Some artistic touches that helped to make it stand out and cushion two notable short comings: a murderer who suspiciously stands out and a surprisingly routine locked room-trick for this series. That being said, the conclusion is solid enough with Touma eliminating all but one of the suspects before trapping them with their own words ("...something only the murderer could have known..."). A fair effort.

The second story in vol. 45, "First Love," can be read as an improvement on the previous story. Koba Tomotoshi is pretty average, second year student at Sakisaka High School. And to his very great surprise, Nitobe Rena asked him one day to be her boyfriend.

Nitobe Rena is the beautiful, popular girl at school and their relationship painted a target on his back. Something happened some time later when he took her back to his house and barely inside, they hear a thump coming from the balcony. What they find on the balcony is the body of a fellow student wrapped inside a bag. So how did the body end up on the balcony? It couldn't be a bizarre suicide, because the apartment is on the seventh floor of a twelve floor building and the body would have landed on an upper apartment balcony. Since this incident, Nitobe's parents have forbidden to see Koba. In desperation, he turns to the teenage genius and classroom detective of his school. Touma is currently engaged on, what they call, the Rakugo Artist Case. Mizuhara gets to play detective, collect evidence and contribute a pretty solid false-solution to the story. I had the most fun with this story playing armchair detective. I had a good idea about the who and why, but was stumped by the how. Something I should have figured out, but somehow missed entirely. Yes, I can be very dense at times, but well played regardless!

The first story from Q.E.D. vol. 46, "Broken Heart," is the Rakugo Artist Case and is one of those stolen money stories Katou has done before, but this one has a neat and original wrinkle on the classic locked room situation. The setting of the story is the comedy theater Shitamachi where the princely sum of five million yen is stolen from the senior Rakugo artist, Tsubakiya Kamekichi, who brought the money along for safekeeping. And to ensure its safety during the performance, the money was locked inside a wallet with padlock secured to the handle of a steel ornamental jar. Only to discover later that evening the stacks of bills had somehow been replaced with blank paper! So how was the money taken from the locked wallet? The locked wallet-trick is only a relative small part of this character piece with its theatrical backdrop and backstory of young, aspiring actress/comedian/narrator, but just loved the visual imagery of the locked wallet hanging on a jar.

You don't find that many impossible crime novels or even short stories fiddling around with padlocks, because you have to ignore the fact they're not all that reliable and easily picked open. Suppose the same holds true for this story and the possibility alone should have made the person watching over the jar the primary suspect. Just going with the story, Katou demonstrated yet again you can achieve great effects with relatively simple, straight forward tricks. Loved it!

For those sick and tired of me droning on about locked rooms and alibis, the next story is for you. "Pilgrimage" is probably the darkest, most disturbing story this series has told and has Touma reconstructing a long-forgotten, deeply buried secret dating back to the Second World War. The story begins in the present with Uchibori Koyuki, a proof reader, finding an unpublished manuscript written by her late father, Shoichiro, who was a non-fiction writer. Manuscript is titled Pilgrim and has three handwritten notes on the cover, "rejected," "coincidence?" and "intentional?" Why was it rejected and shelved? She shows the manuscript to Touma and he found the subject matter more interesting than the reason why it was rejected. Pilgrim tells the tragic story from the early 1940s of a serial robber who accidentally killed one of his victims, a young newlywed woman, which forced him to flee the country. Yamai Seimei was eventually captured in Hanoi, Vietnam, ensuring "the bastard will get the death penalty." Usui Shigeru, victim's husband, travels to Hanoi under wartime circumstances, but halfway through he decides to continue the journey to Hanoi on foot – about a 1000 km journey. Two months later, Usui Shigeru arrives at the court in Hanoi and asks the court to spare his wife killer by commuting his death sentence to a prison sentence. But why? More importantly, why was it not enough to save the killer from death? And, of course, the reason is also why the manuscript remained unpublished.

A very dark, disturbing reason. Not that you would get that impression from the description, so far, because “"Pilgrimage" starts out with a human touch of Chestertonian wonder. A man forgiving and sparing the life of his wife's murderer following a mysterious, self-imposed pilgrimage and the wonder what he could have experienced during those two months. Only for it to turn in a terrifying, pitch-black and nightmarish horror plucked from the pages of an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Or, in this case, Edogawa Rampo. Bravo!

So, on a whole, not a bad collection of stories covering these three volumes. "Tuba and Grave," "First Love" and "Pilgrimage" are the obvious standouts and personally liked "Broken Heart" for its locked wallet mystery. Only "Question" and "Venus" trailed behind, but even they had their moments. Far from disappointed and look forward to the next three volumes, which you can expect before too long.

Logic Games: Q.E.D. vol. 42-43 by Motohiro Katou

The first story from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 42, "Escher Hotel," brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to the titular hotel, "designed based on the paintings of the artist M.C. Escher," during its grand opening ceremony – hosted by its rich owner, Elie Silver. A hotel entirely based and modeled after the "mathematically-inspired artwork" by my homeboy Dutch artist Maurits Escher. So the hotel is full with seemingly impossible architecture and artwork like a Penrose Staircase.

However, the opening of the clifftop Escher Hotel makes it direct competitor to the once popular Takadai Hotel directly below it. Kurozumi Ryozaburo, an influential prefecture council member, is the owner of the Takadai Hotel and likes to throw his weight around by acting like a mobster. He even has a goon following him around posing as his secretary to goon arm people who annoy his boss. So he's not happy about a hotel opening directly above his. Not to mention he has a shady history with the place. Decades ago, there was an artist's studio where the Escher Hotel stands and Ryozaburo had been fighting with the artist over spring water. That conflicted ended with the artist going to prison for apparently trying to kill Ryozaburo. And he's right there at the opening ceremony when a murder is discovered.

The body of Aohara Shuji, a newspaper reporter, is found lying on the Penrose Staircase with a noose around his neck knotted tightly to the handrail, but how did the murderer placed the body in such an inaccessible, impossible place – which had to be done in five minutes or less ("...corpse wasn't here when we looked the first time"). Not to mention that the staircase is only a miniature ("it'll break if you jump"). So how did the body end up on the staircase? This story really is a howdunit as the who-and why are fairly obvious, but the how-was-it-done angle makes for a very neat, well-done and imaginative variation on the locked room mystery. However, I'm still not entirely sure whether it counts as an impossible crime or only a borderline impossible crime. You can make a case for both, "viewed from a certain angle," but suppose that's in keeping with the Escher theme of the story. One last thing worth mentioning is Sou Touma confronting the murderer made for a decidedly nontraditional ending ("good luck!") that should have been used more often in traditional detective fiction. So a pretty good story overall!

The second story of vol. 42, "Logic Tower," is a weird one and probably would have been a bit more appreciative had I been familiar with a series like Liar Game.

Anyway, the story concerns a new processor system developed by a former, overworked employee, Mia Field, of Lindell Corp. She quit her job and plans to go overseas, but informs several people she's hidden the designs somewhere. And whoever can find it, can claim it. The place turns out to be an old, abandoned casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, which is scheduled to be demolished in mere hours ("dynamite has been installed in the entire building"). One of the people asked Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to help him find the hidden designs. Sou Touma recognizes the challenge as a logic puzzle as Mia gave contradictory clues to the various participants, "that thing is not in the odd numbered floors" and "that thing is not in the even numbered floors," but knows there must be logic and reason to those contradictory hints. Something that reduces the space, spread out over 48 floors and nearly 1000 rooms, to a single location. Not necessarily a bad or even a dull story. Just one that failed to grab me in any way.

The first of two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 43, "Investigation," takes a delightfully unconventional approach to telling an ultra-conventional whodunit. Azumaya Kouichiro, director of a pharmaceutical company, is killed with a bolt from a crossbow-like weapon at his private residence and the police arrest one of his employees, Nishijin Akira – only person in the house without an alibi. Nishijin Akira maintains that's innocent and his lawyer, Shiradai Masayoshi, decides to take an unconventional approach to breakdown the other alibis. A televised reconstruction of the day of the murder staged at the scene of the crime. Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara are two of the participants to play parts of the people who were present at the time of the murder, which has been written down in a scenario/instructions by the lawyer. And the objective is simple. Try to find a hole in the scenario big enough to get to victim's private room without being seen and topple of the kekeshi doll (i.e. victim). Anyone "who manages to tip over this doll is most likely the suspect."

Befitting a classically-styled whodunit, there are several floor plans of the house and the position of the suspects at various times. However, the reconstruction failed to establish the innocence of the only suspect, but Sou Touma's part anchored him to a single room and gave him plenty of time to do a bit of woolgathering. The solution he arrives at reveals a clever, daring piece of risk management and planning on the part of the murderer, but not a perfect plan. Touma destroys it by demonstrating reality doesn't always conform to someone's expectations, which revealed a fatal flaw in the plot. Very well done in both presentation and execution easily making it the best story from these two volumes.

"Ginger the Salesman" is the last story from vol. 43 and feared it would be a repeat of "Logic Tower" as it's essentially another "liar's game" type of story, but developed into an unexpected interesting story. Ginger Garage is the central character of the story who worked his way up from a teenage street vendor to a first-rate salesman ("your speaking skills are god-given..."). Ginger crosses path with Sou Touma when the latter is asked by an old teacher, currently hospitalized, to take his place as a consultant on an investment project for a large bank ("every time you refuse, my leg hurts more... aaah, so much pain..."). This project concerns a start up company that wants to bring tourism to space. They claim to have developed a spaceship capable of "making the journey in two hours" and stay there for two minutes in zero gravity, before coming back down to Earth. Rudolf-1 is still in its trial phase and the Universal Frontier Company needs funding to get their business off the ground. Sou Touma has to talk with the company's consultant, Ginger, but it's blatantly obvious there's something dodgy about their already dubious claims.

Nevertheless, they give a demonstration to Sou Touma and numerous witnesses showing Rudolf-1 can really reach space. Something that should be impossible to fake, but Touma appears skeptical. And not without reason. I think this part of the plot and its solution comes very close to that type of impossible crime rarely observed in the wild, "Impossible Technology." The observed flight of the Rudolf-1 is only background dressing to Ginger's backstory and the reason why he appeared to have lost his touch as the smooth, silver-tongued salesman. So an unexpectedly interesting and decent little character-puzzle to close out this volume.

I really enjoyed "Escher Hotel," thought "Investigation" was excellent and "Ginger the Salesman" surprisingly decent. Only "Logic Tower" came up short, but three out of four is not bad. So expect the next review before too long, because I can finish the series in four reviews. I aim to have this series wrapped up by July. Mark your calendars!

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.

Motives: Q.E.D. vol. 39-40 by Motohiro Katou

You can never be sure what to expect from the next volume in the Q.E.D. series as the man behind it, Motohiro Katou, created a detective series for the 21st century by restructuring the traditional detective story with the modern world in mind – breaking new ground along the way. So the series still has regular, classically-styled detective stories, full with unbreakable alibis, dying messages and locked room murders, but also about as many that aren't as easily pigeonholed. I suggest taking a look at "The Hit List: Top 10 Favorite Cases from Motohiro Katou's Q.E.D. vol. 1-25" to get a glimpse of Katou's range as a writer and plotter. The stories under discussion today definitely held a few surprises in that regard.

The first of two stories from Q.E.D. vol. 39, "The Incident in Urban Hills Room 6," takes place at a shabby, rundown lodging house where one of the tenants finds the body of their landlady hanging in Room 6. A room that had stood empty for ages and was never before unlocked. The death of the landlady is dismissed as a suicide, but a suicide on the premise comes with stigma. Every housekeeper in the neighborhood refuses to come over to clean the place, until Kana Mizuhara arrives on their doorstep to apply for the position of housekeeper. She immediately starts asking questions about the suicide of their landlady in Room 6 ("we'd even taken to calling it a forbidden room").

Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara go to school with the granddaughter of the landlady. She refuses to believe it was suicide, because she wouldn't and her emergency buzzer was missing. Kana goes to work to collect information from the ill-assorted group of tenants comprising of a failed medical student, a fortune teller, a cab driver, a cook and an office worker. Not to mention the newest, mysterious tenant who "just moved into room 6 like it was no problem at all." So did the landlady commit suicide or did one of her tenants kill her and why? Motive is key here. Sou Touma acts as an armchair detective in the background and notes that each resident has problems, but "none of them are motives for murder" and then reverses the whole situation by showing which, of those non-motives, "is actually a motive for murder" – brilliantly balanced atop the reason why the body was found in Room 6. However, "The Incident in Urban Hills Room 6" is not nearly as conventional as it sounds with sting coming in the solution. A solution revealing it to be an anti-detective story that's somehow not an anti-detective story. You have to read it to understand what I mean, but a great story and a good illustration of what makes this series so much fun.

The second story, "Grand Tour," brings Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara to Hawaii on invitation of an ex-NASA scientist, Professor Anderson, to celebrate his retirement. Professor Anderson worked in the communication team of the Voyager program and also invited his former colleagues from the communication network department. However, the celebration and reunion overlaps with the anniversary of the death of Anderson's wife more than thirty years ago. So has that anything to do with his sudden disappearance? A very minor and regrettably not particularly interesting mystery, plot-wise, except for the fascinating sidelights on space exploration.

The first of two stories from vol. 40, "Love Square," is another very minor, not particularly exciting detective story which mostly is taken up by Sou Touma and Kana Mizuhara being forced to play matchmakers between four different people. They're all interested in the wrong person, but this group eventually become suspects when the day's earnings of a bookshop is stolen from the cash box. Now the trick behind the theft is clever enough with an unusual motive behind it, but, on a whole, too slight and forgettable.

Fortunately, the second and final story, "Secret Room No. 4," is a return to form with a nesting doll-like plot of locked room murders!

Samejima Naoyuki, of Suzume Tours & Tourism, is doing a test run of a murder mystery tour on Sasakure Island, "the perfect setting for a murder," based on the plots and tricks of the once well-known locked room expert, Yoimiya Sodehara – whose work nowadays "aren't exactly flying off the shelves." There are other representatives of the company, but, more importantly, they have three guests. Sou Touma, Kana Mizuhara and Enari "Queen" Himeko of the Sakisaka Private High School Detective Club. She didn't need the other club members on this assignment ("...asking them is the same as asking a baby to pull a covered wagon"). When they arrive at the island mansion, the one-of-a-kind mystery tour begins and comprises of three different cases or challenges ("all of them will be locked room murders").

So they get shown three separate locked rooms which, one by one, get unlocked to reveal an apparent impossible “murder” with the company staff taking on the role of victims. What they have to answer is how the murder was committed, instead of who committed the murder. In the first locked room scene, they're shown an old, windowless storehouse with a solid steel door, but Touma immediately solves it based on the smell of new, fresh wood. In the second locked room scene, the door is bolted from the inside and has a locked window looking out over a steep cliff, but Himeko makes short work of the mystery. Very much to the annoyance of Sodehara ("...just beginner's luck"). The third room has double locks on both the door and windows, but, once again, the puzzle barely poses a challenge to Touma. And solves the puzzle in mere minutes. However, the fourth, unplanned locked room murder takes him a bit longer to explain.

When they return from the game, they find the dining room unexplained locked. And when they open the door, they find the body of the director of finance, Komaki Kamekichi, sitting at the head of a fully set dining table complete with burning candles – a knife sticking out of his chest. All three windows were securely locked on the inside. A very clever, well-handled locked room situation, but even better is how one of the three fictitious locked room-tricks came into play to reveal (SPOILER/ROT13) n svsgu vzcbffvovyvgl nf gur zheqrere perngrq na vzcbffvoyr nyvov ol orvat ybpxrq va bar bs gubfr guerr ebbzf, cynlvat n pbecfr, va pbzovangvba jvgu gur pnaqyr-gevpx gb znxr vg nccrne nf vs gur zheqrere unq yrff gvzr guna jnf npghnyyl gur pnfr. Brilliant stuff! Admittedly, the locked room-tricks aren't blistering original, but how they were used together to create a first-rate impossible crime story makes "Secret Room No. 4" a personal favorite.

So vol. 39 started out strong with the unexpectedly original "The Incident in Urban Hills Room 6" and "Secret Room No. 4" ended vol. 40 on a high note by turning the locked room mystery into a Matryoshka doll, which is good enough for me to overlook the two less than stellar stories in between. So next stop in this series is the C.M.B. crossover, but not before doing C.M.B. vol. 3 and 4. Stay tuned!