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.