The Kindaichi Case Files Volume 16 The Magical Express by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato

Kindaichi is looking forward to his summer vacation and lots of sleeping late. But he is awakened early by Superintendent Akechi and told he is recieving a commendation from the Police for his help in their cases. Kindaichi needs to return something, so he takes it with him to police HQ for the ceremony.

He is to recieve a plaque, but he accidentally drops the item he needed to return and it turns out to be an adult video, causing himself and Police Commissioner much embarrassment. But on the same day, the Police recieve a package from an unknown sender containing a twisted-up marionette and a threat to cause a death on a train later that month.

Kindaichi, Kenmochi and Akechi, as well as Miyuki, are on the train while it makes the trip. But they aren't the only ones on the train. There is a magic troupe performing on the train, and from the very start, they are very visible on the train, handing out roses, doing card tricks or other sorts of magic, and generally keeping the passengers entertained. But a bomb threat on the train has the train pulling into a cargo train station for the police to search it. There is a bomb, but it merely spews rose petals.

But shortly before the train heads for the final station, the leader of the magic troupe goes missing, and is found amidst a bunch of roses and balloons, dead with a knife sticking out of his temple. Then, smoke floods the compartment as the fire alarm goes off, and everyone flees the room. When the fire alarm is determined to have been a fake, they go back in, but the body is now gone as if it had never been there. But where did it go? It couldn't have been thrown out the window... the window doesn't open that wide, and Kindaichi and the others weren't gone long enough for the body to have been disposed of any other way.

From there, the troupe and the others go to the hotel where the troupe will be performing at the end of the line. But the owner of the hotel remembers them as the troupe belonging to another famous magician Reiko Chikamiya. Five years before, there had been a horrible accident, and she died while rehearsing a magic trick. But was her death really an accident?

As members of the troupe continue to die, Kindaichi must figure out who the murderer is and why he wants the others dead. Can Kindaichi match his intelligence and detective ability against the wiles of a magician who is determined to bring death to the former students and troupe of Reiko Chikamiya?

Many people are fascinated with stage magic, and this story exploits that to the utmost, using the tricks of magic to conceal a killer's schemes. I did figure out what connection the killer had to the old troupe, but I was decieved as to who it was, so I suppose I am getting better at figuring out who the killer is.

This is a long mystery, but there is a great deal of explanation as to how the killer did the various murders, so only 4/5 of the book is mystery, while the rest is explanation as well as an addendum where the killer manages to kill the single remaining member of the troupe who escaped the killer's attention during the murder mystery portion of the book, as manages to make the escaped victim kill himself.

A tightly-plotted mystery with plenty of red herrings and misdirections to throw off the readers from figuring out who really dunnit, this book is an excellent example of the manga murder mystery and well worth reading. Proof that there really are all kinds and sorts of manga, for every reading age and taste.