探偵犬クリス 柴犬探偵、盗まれた宝石を追う!

A very cute little mystery that I think was just right for me in terms of language learning. I was expecting sort of a Scooby Doo style talking dog solving mysteries setup, but it's actually a much more grounded take on both the "animal detective" and "kid sleuth" genres.

The dog, Chris, is a former police dog that gets retired from the force due to an incident that made her terribly afraid of bugs, and a shy young boy named Hinata ends up taking care of Chris because his family runs the local veterinary hospital and his grandpa used to train police dogs. The actual mystery isn't too hard to sus out if you're paying attention, I nailed both the culprit and the motive fairly early, but it was still satisfying to get it right and there are some red herrings that seem to leave things open for sequels.

I'd actually say the story is more about Hinata bonding with his dog than it is the mystery plot, though the mysteries are certainly present the whole time, and it was a nice slice of life in that regard. I liked that they explicitly say "this isn't a manga or a drama" and avoid a lot of the more irresponsible tropes of the kid detective genre. There's only really one major lapse in adult judgment which is pretty good compared to something like, Encyclopedia Brown and Hinata and his friend Mayuka who walks the dog with him don't deliberately stick their noses into dangerous affairs they don't belong in. It's more that in the process of taking care of Chris they happen to stumble onto clues because Chris is still in detective mode and finds things and I found that refreshing.

As far as language goes, this was perfect. I was generally able to read one chapter a nigh, although some crunch at work kept me away from the final three chapters for about a week. I was able to read quite a bit without looking things up, but there were some good set phrases I wasn't familiar with along with some daily life, pets, and police words I hadn't seen before. Best of all is this vocab gets repeated a lot which helps things stick. It was a fun little story and I imagine reading the others will help those words stick more, so I'm looking forward to the rest.