Case Closed, Volume 15

March 15, 2007
Sixteen-year-old ace detective Jimmy Kudo runs afoul of gangsters Gin and Vodka and ends up shrunken into a kid by an experimental poison that was supposed to kill him. He hides as Conan Edogawa, living with his friend Rachel and her P.I. dad, Richard. Conan can't help working on cases, and he uses a voice changer and sleep darts to make it look like Richard solved them. Volume 15 starts with the resolution to the ski lodge murders from Volume 14, then moves into the kidnapping of real pop band Two Mix, with frequent jokes about how much singer Minami sounds like Conan (she does his voice in the anime). The third case is another locked room mystery, and the fourth brings back fellow teen detective Harley and ends on the usual cliffhanger. Most cases in the series are single shots with little cumulative effect; Gin and Vodka reappear occasionally to advance the background plot, but very little changes over the 15 volumes. Trying to figure out the odd and complex murders before Conan is fun, if repetitive, but Aoyama is creative in his murders. The Americanization of some character names to match the Cartoon Network broadcast is incongruous with the modern Japanese setting and distracting from the story. Typical murder mystery violence and gore recommend this to older teens.Teresa Copeland, Yuma Cty. Lib. Dist., AZ

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