Murder with a side of murder and some extra murder on top, to go.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Gosho Aoyama
Translation/Adaptation: Tetsuichiro Miyaki
What They Say
The Cat Who Read Japanese
Digging for clams at the beach, the Junior Detective League digs up a mystery instead. Did a depressed beachgoer commit suicide, or was he murdered by one of his friends? Then detective Richard Moore faces a challenge beyond his crime-fighting abilities: taking care of his ex-wife’s new kitten! But the pesky furball leads him to the clues he needs to solve an impenetrable code. Could there be a new detective in town—one even cuter than Conan?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I had the perfect teaser line for this review, but the book editor beat me to it with the “Cat Who” reference on the back cover. (There was an extremely long running mystery series with that title, you’ve probably noticed the books back when bookstores were a thing that existed.) The author himself didn’t make the connection, as the ‘detective dedication’ for this volume has nothing to do with that series.
This volume is bursting with cases, starting with the conclusion to the murder on the ski slope flashback. Jimmy and Harley reveal to the police the solution to the crime, but both refuse credit thinking that the other kid detective on the case solved it without outside help. The joke being that Harley doesn’t realize Jimmy was the other kid detective.
The second case is a bit more down to earth, and one that could have turned very bad very quickly. It seems that I hear the news of a child who died because they were left alone in a hot car far too often lately. A waitress at a cafe the Moores are at finds herself in a situation where she can prevent such a death, but they have to find the trapped child first! Luck is on their side because it’s not a summertime case, but it may also be a missing person case as well because no one knows what happened to the little boy’s father. The clues the trio use to narrow down a location seem extremely obtuse, and had this been reality things probably wouldn’t have had a happy ending.
Next up is a trip to the beach for the Junior Detectives, as it appears everyone is out on the beach digging clams. As a New Englander, those clams the kids are digging up look pretty small, so littleneck size. Conan gives the others a lesson on how to find the bivalves. I guess clamming is a popular beach activity in Japan? Anyway, it’s not that important as the crime that takes place on the beach could have taken place anywhere. A fatal poisoning occurs that looks very much like a suicide, but looks can be deceiving.
The lead case for this volume, and the one that resulted in a photo of a cat on the cover, involves not murder or suicide but a simple coded message. I have to wonder how Detective Moore makes a living when he is shown barely working. If it wasn’t for Conan the guy would be living on the streets or selling fast food. A simple case comes to Moore, a man wants to know what his daughter has been texting behind his back but it appears to be written in code. Conan, being a teenager in mind if not body, easily figures out what he’s looking at right away. Meanwhile, Rachel is cat-sitting for her mother and the little kitten proceeds to spend the day giving clues to the laziest detective alive. I don’t buy that Conan could have anticipated the hints Moore would gleam from a curious kitten finding hidden stashes of treats around the house. It’s also rather sad that the detective didn’t think to ask his own teenage daughter if the coded slang he was looking at was a common thing. World’s worst detective and father.
The final case in this volume has yet another murder happening right in front of Conan, making him the world’s most cursed six-year-old nine years running. A cursed house in the mountains ends up providing the perfect scenario for a copycat murder, once again framed as a suicide. This is the third case in the same volume where it’s a faked suicide! A locked room murder is one of the oldest mysteries one can hope to come across. The solution this time is elegant in it’s realism, because an old creepy mansion is likely to have a secret passageway or two. Even Conan has to resort to more simple tricks to convey his solution to the officer in charge of the investigation, fearing the watchful eye of Eisuke.
In Summary
Suicide or murder? Why, it’s always murder of course! For once I wish the solution was suicide, as a person is far more likely to kill themselves than kill another person. To break up the monotony of the tragicomic deaths which follow the cast of Case Closed around like the grim specter of mortality we get two other cases of lighter consequence. I personally like the kid trapped in a car case more than the ‘cat detective’ one, because sometimes a bit of grounded realism is a land of absurdity is the best escape of all. Even if the mysteries are feeling a bit stale, at least the character interaction is still top notch.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A –
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: July 8th, 2014
MSRP: $9.99
