This episode is a Detective Boys story (where Ai is involved for once!). They are in a writing class being hosted by an author named Kosuke Omura. A girl named Michiko, who works at the bookstore that’s referenced in the title, is also there. She wants to become an author and is there to try to learn how to write. The episode opens with Kosuke reading Mitsuhiko’s story (although the audience doesn’t realize it at that point). It’s after the opening credits where we learn it was a story being read out loud. It’s revealed early on that Kosuke is an actual author and has published three books.

But what’s interesting is that even though the bookstore is mentioned in the title, it’s not the actual setting for the story. They are at a location owned by Ryoji Nojima. He’s an elderly man who comes across as a real asshole. He sees Genta’s story and trashes it. Talk about crushing hopes and dreams! Ryoji takes everyone down to a climate controlled room downstairs that has a lot of books in it. Many are worth a lot of money; in fact, the lowest value for any of the books is about a million yen. He hands each person a book and demands they read it. Looking at what kind of books he was handing out, I don’t know how he expected first graders to be able to comprehend what’s in them. Conan and Ai I’m sure could, but the others, probably not. At this point, it’s also established that Ryoji is Kosuke’s sponsor but that he has some anger toward the author.

When the group takes a break for lunch, Michiko mentions she cut herself on a book and sucks on the injury. Ayumi hands her a bandage, and shortly after, Michiko collapses. At the hospital, it’s determined that she was potentially poisoned. The rest of the episode sees Conan figuring out how the poisoning happened, as well as the truth behind the crime. I appreciated learning about Paris Green, as well as how it may (or may not) have played a role in the poisoning. It’s Michiko’s father (who owns the bookstore referenced in the title) who identifies the Paris Green and the facts that appear to make this particular book it’s connected to is important to the mystery. It turned out Ryoji had no idea about Paris Green or that he had it among his books in his library.

But Conan figures everything out… and shockingly, is able to share what he deduces as himself. There’s no need for any tranquilizer darts or the voice changing bowtie. That was a nice change of pace.

Overall, this was a decent one-episode mystery, and I was happy to see it wasn’t a murder mystery. There was no preview for the next episode, so at this point, I’m assuming that there won’t be an episode next week. I’ll check to make sure, of course, but usually the lack of a preview indicates that the series will be taking at least one week off.

Additional posts about Case Closed:

• Case Closed: Episode 1022 – “The Cursed Museum”