Spiral 3
Posted: February 19, 2011 Filed under: Spiral Leave a comment »Kyo Shirodaira / Eita Mizuno – Yen Press – 2008 – 15 volumes
Here we start to get into Record of a Fallen Vampire territory. Ayumu lays out a plan for snaring Rio in Hiyono’s information net, knowing full well that Rio will plan on going after Hiyono. But Ayumu knows there is one extreme way out of the situation, and Rio of course does this. It is pretty extreme, and luckily it followed up with a confrontation anyway. I was a little worried that it would trip over its own logic and not go for the exclusion theory here.
Aside from the fun in seeing how Narumi and Hiyono would eventually catch Rio (which is a lot of fun), we also get another deadly puzzle for Narumi at the end of the volume. Rio’s fun because it’s the type of mystery where the reader sees who did it, and the characters know who did it, it’s just a matter of piecing together enough evidence to prove it. And Rio makes that hard, because she’s willing to go to horrifying lengths to avoid getting caught by Ayumu. And the Ayumu deadly puzzle du jour involves strychnine, and a winning save by Hiyono. I can’t say it enough, but that girl’s a wonderful part of this series.
Plot-wise… meh. Not much forward movement or news on Narumi’s brother or the Blade Children. But the Rio situation more than made up for it. The mysteries here remind me a lot of Case Closed, except this series avoids being too episodic, and the mysteries are targeted directly at the main characters and those around them rather than Ayumu just wandering into them all the time. It’s a lot of fun. Luckily the fourth volume came into the store I work at this week, so I have one more volume before I wait to pick up the rest on sale.
