I found this fair-condition softcover at the Used Book Superstore in Burlington, and was glad of another release copy.

I first heard of this intriguing boy-detective manga series from its TV Tropes page. The pattern of the story will be familiar to mystery fans - young Kindaichi gets drawn in to a seemingly simple situation, only to discover a murder, with more deaths to follow as the wrong people are suspected and conflicting clues come to light.

In this book, he's been tapped to help with the stagework at a Drama Club production of "Phantom of the Opera," and when people start dying for real he has to step in and try to solve the case. There's a lot of humor and slapstick up front - Kindaichi can be very goofy indeed - but things get pretty serious once the murders start. There's another tie-in to the "phantom of the opera" concept, too: a young woman whose face was severely disfigured with acid...

One handy hint, for anyone who gets involved in this kind of murder-mystery - if you should happen to believe you know who did it, do not, under any circumstances, start to say "...then the murderer must be..." - if you do, a threatening shape will rear up behind you and ensure that you never tell! {wry grin}

Another fairly common aspect of this series is the way in which the murderer's motives may make him or her sympathetic, to some degree; Kindaichi can solve the crimes, but can't fix the emotional trauma that led up to them.

[There's an anime based on the series.]

I left this book in the Little Free Library at around 2:30; hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2017 TV Series release challenge. ***