Uromu Kannagi’s Last Case

The battles between the Sharaku Kuonji, the King of Phantom Thieves, and the band of genius high school students collectively known as “the Great Detectives” captured the nation’s attention for years thanks to their publication into a series of novels by their chronicler, Masaru Mitsurugi.

The final entry in the series, Uromu Kannagi’s Last Case, was a massive success and hotly debated for its unexpected ending, in which not all of the mysteries’ answers are revealed to the reader.

And then, it all fell apart. An expose was published in a weekly tabloid revealing a shocking truth: Uromu Kannagi, the leader of the Great Detectives, did not exist. He had no birth registry, and nobody had ever seen him before.

The internet, having only recently penetrated into the Japanese mainstream, was consumed in one of the first great Japanese flame wars, and when it was all over, public opinion had been established: Masaru Mitsurugi was a fraud, his books were all lies, and he was officially designated “safe to bully”.

Seventeen years later, Hakuto Seseragi and Shiki Kurusu are members of the Shinonome University Detective Club, an unofficial circle of those forcibly adopted as semi-willing allies of the eccentric genius ojou-detective Kira Kongoji. While walking back to their apartment (the apartment building they both live in, that is. Even though they’re neighbors, they don’t “live together”. And they definitely aren’t dating, no matter how often they cook each other dinner. Honest.), they encounter a woman collapsing on the side of the road, clutching a copy of Uromu Kannagi’s Last Case to her chest. In rapid order, they discover:

Her name is Yui Mitsurugi.

She is the daughter of Masaru Mitsurugi.

She believes her father’s stories were real.

She has a pressing need to solve the unsolved mysteries left behind in Uromu Kannagi’s Last Case very soon, or something terrible will happen…

Ranked 9th in the 2023 Honkaku Mystery Top 10.