Case Closed Volume 1

At a very young age I found myself reading mystery novels, I started on Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five” and read many others of her mystery books. I as grew older I moved on to the works of Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle amongst others. I am huge mystery fan if I’m not in to watch Diagnosis Murder, Midsomer Murders or any other similar programme I’ll usually make sure the video recorder is working. So when I first heard about Case Closed, I quickly tried to hunt a copy down. I wasn’t disappointed.
Case Closed stars a young high school student, Jimmy Kudo, Jimmy is not only a huge mystery fan, but he has powers of observation that rival some of the greatest fictional detectives of all time. Jimmy quickly wraps up two mysterious deaths using only observation, logical deduction and in the first case a football. Jimmy’s best friend and love interest Rachel Moore keeps warning Jimmy that one day he might get into serious trouble…and of course he does. While tracking down some shady men in black, Jimmy stumbles across a deal in progress, before Jimmy can tell anyone though he’s attacked. The men in black give Jimmy an experimental poison that leaves no traces, but has to be tested on humans, Jimmy blacks out. When he awakes, he finds that the poison has caused his body to shrink to the size of a seven year old; Jimmy’s voice is also affected. Jimmy returns home to ask his neighbour Dr. Agasa for help. Agasa agrees but says he’ll need some of the poison Jimmy was given to make an antidote. Jimmy goes to live with Rachel and her father Roger, a third-rate private eye, but unable to tell them his identity to protect them, Jimmy adopts the name Conan Edogawa. Conan begins to look for the men in black, while helping Roger on his cases, but having to do it so nobody suspects Conan is Jimmy is extremely difficult.
The mysteries vary from murder, kidnapping and…er…murder. The mysteries are fairly varied, a murder on a rollercoaster, the kidnapping of a young girl, and a man dead, with a knife in his back in a hot room. They keep you hooked to the end of the story like most good mysteries should, and the romantic subplot between Rachel and Jimmy adds to your attachment for both these characters.
The artwork is often extremely detailed, while you might expect this for crime scenes it also applies to a great many of general backgrounds and the characters. There is also fair amount of comedy, especially after Jimmy is turned small.
Gosho Aoyama the creator of Case Closed obviously loves the genre and claims to use all his knowledge of detective stories in the series, which should mean that the series also gets better and better. Also included is a short praise to some of Aoyama’s favourite detectives, this volume showcases Sherlock Holmes. There isn’t a lot of this kind of old school mystery manga in the UK, wither this is due to a lack of it in general or that nothing else has made it over here yet I’m not sure. Case Closed is certainly a must have for anyone who’s a big fan of the mystery genre (wither their fans of manga or not), also those looking for something a little different from the majority of manga on the market may also want to give this a try.