‘Shades of Pandora’ by ‘Sherry K. Clover’ Takes Japan by Storm
Boss
of the most influential detective agency in town, Jennifer Hermes had a
routine. Every day she woke up, drank coffee, solved homicide cases, drank
coffee, flirted with her sexy secretary Christa, drank coffee, ate
dinner with her childhood friend Hope Themis and her family and drank
more coffee before going to sleep.
That is until she took a
co-worker’s invitation to a Phantom Thief Pandora heist on a whim. It
was supposed to be just business when she cornered the elusive magician
in red. But under the light of moon, dashing criminal got away with
stealing not only his target for the night, but also Jennifer’s lips.
Worst of all, young detective noticed Pandora had
‘borrowed’ Christa’s shiny new Harley Davidson as part of his initial
escape plan… only after she shot it out from under the thief and sent
it ablaze. Now, it seems all the progress she made wooing her buxom
secretary also went up in flames. But is there actually more to
Christa’s anger?
Join Jennifer in this steamy tale of
secrets and passion as she strives to put the devilish thief behind the bars and
reclaim her blonde darling’s heart. And in the progress, learn much more than she bargained for about the thief, the blonde and herself.
Shades of Pandora. Nothing will go according to the plan.
“My wife and I found ourselves completely immersed in the world the author paints. She expressed her wishes to portray Jennifer when it inevitably gets a movie adaptation. In the meanwhile, we will be looking forward to a sequel.”
Kudo Yusaku - Award-winning Mystery Author best known for Night Baron series.
“Every Kaitou KID fan should have it in their library! Clover-sensei is definitely a fan herself. Her research when creating Pandora’s character was stunningly accurate. Even with the twist, maybe because of it, I was giggling like a middle school girl till the very last page. I could totally put myself in Jennifer’s shoes. We had a real laugh when my best friend found herself empathizing with Hope.”
Suzuki Sonoko - President of Kaitou KID Fan Club and High School Detective.
“I read this book fully expecting to find a yet another fangirl pornography, a travesty. But Ms. Clover amazed me with her extensive knowledge of detective work in addition to vivid descriptions of crime scenes and deduction progress. Not to mention the respect she reserves to Sherlock Holmes. While there are a number of points I can not agree with -as I have ample reason to believe KID is a man- she managed to capture my heart with the way she brought her characters to life.”
Hakuba Saguru - Second most prominent Arch-Nemesis of Kaitou KID. Edogawa Conan was not available -or legal- to comment.
Good. The plan ‘Use enough sciency words that he would miss the part where you gleefully almost murdered his subordinates’ worked. Her genius shines again.
“For the first, I’d prefer to have it drawn traditionally in the morning while hungry but if it comes to that, go for it. I should be able to maneuver through.” She’d probably check the security camera’s to see what they ate that day. Good thing they both lived in work.
“For the second, yes. Get me their blood, two full tubes each delivered within the hour, and I’ll look after your hedgehog for as long as you want. Just in case, I’ll give you some spares too.” Sucker. You forgot Haibara was an animal lover to begin with. More than she loved humans, that’s for sure.
“I can’t believe I agreed to this, but it’s for the sake of their health, right?” Yeah, as if. Knowing Haibara, she was up to some crazy shit again. When did she ever care about people to begin with?! If there was anyone she cared about, it would be the children or Ran or…
Lmao Shinichi what are you thinking about? As if she would care about you. What a fucking joke. Tch. Time to get his head out of the clouds.
“Okay,” he finally settled, figuring that it would be better if he pretended to believe in this ‘lie’ the other told him, “I will do it. One tube per person, right? I’ll see what I can do today and get back to you with them pronto.”
“As if.” She snapped. Wow. You’d think Haibara would ever do something like that to anyone. “To begin with, APTX 4869 research was passed down from generation to generation in the Organization. These are personal projects.”
“One of them was meant to temporarily slow down the metabolism to stimulate death in a way that can’t be detected from outside. Many drugs with similar use are circumventing the market but none so perfect that a thorough inspection wouldn’t reveal.” She sounded almost proud. “Of course the drug itself was incomplete and I had to improvise the dosage on the spot so that whoever found them wouldn’t mistake the subject for an actual corpse and treat him carelessly. It was my misjudgement that caused him to spend the following week comatose. Still, I had no other way of dropping his overall body temperature.”
“Other was a stimulant that boosts central nervous system and causes an involuntary spike in brain activity, even if unconscous. Assistant Chief had been thrown around quite a bit with a high risk of head trauma so I needed to make sure she wouldn’t shut down never to wake up again. Besides that, I utilized several muscle relaxants to counter the damage it could cause on rest of the body. When I tried it on mice, it caused muscle spasms intense enough to sever tendons so I didn’t want to take the risk. Other than that you might’ve observed increased anxiety and paranoia lately. If so, it might be accompanied by a strong feeling of chronic deja vu for the subject. But that’s not anything new for a detective, I suppose.”
Basically, she could’ve killed slash drugged them crazies.
Listening to Haibara’s lecture was a drag. Not to mention, he couldn’t keep his mind to it. This boy had important matters of his own on his mind, so stuff like this barely mattered. He let out a sigh and then a groan, allowing Haibara to finish her story.
“Fine. I get it. I’ll draw their blood for you, but I have two questions before you give me the tools necessary for it;” he stuck up a finger as he continued talking, “1) In case they don’t agree to letting me draw their blood, can I tranquilize them? And 2)”, another finger was raised for this, “You will look after Kid – my hedgehog – after I do this favour for you, right?” God the shit he had to go through to get all this verified.
Stop being tsun tsun you criminal. At least I make an attempt at living peacefully and don’t go stalking after you every time you run off to make nice with FBI. Living honestly though? Yeah. You’re right. Not gonna happen.
“Because, we’re talking about chemicals I concocted. Shiho Miyano. Daughter of Hell’s Angel and Mad Scientist. Sherry of the Organization’s research heads. Creator of APTX 4869.” She declared dramatically like that should explain everything. And it should. APTX 4869’s specialty was killing without a trace. Changes that your common neighborhood hospital could detect a drug that left her hands, let alone treat them, was close to zero.
Ah, damn. She forgot to lean against a door frame for emphasis. Maybe next time.
Way too dramatic there, Haibara. That was Shinichi’s job and you knew it. Just be glad you didn’t lean against a door frame because you honestly weren’t the type for it. Let’s be real, you would look even more ridiculous than Shinichi if you did.
"You… ” He almost didn’t dare say this but… “You don’t mean to tell me you fed them something similar to APTX 4869?”
“They don’t have to agree with it unless you finally decided to live a honest life and disposed of your watch.” With an adult body, he had more strength than him and already known as an eccentric if something went wrong. If there’s anything Haibara hated, it was unnecessary attention from authorities. Ah. But wait, wait. This was no time to get snappy.
“Think carefully, Kudou-kun. If something goes wrong, at worst, both their lives could be in danger. And we both know what happened in your case. I doubt that would help with your workload and I too, do not want any more lives in my conscience. We need to make sure and act fast if needed.”
WHAT!! WHAT!!! Living honestly is one thing, but disposing of his watch? Shinichi actually wanted to do neither. Sort of. Maybe the first a bit because he hated being Conan but– AGH!! Why did this matter! Haibara was more of a nutjob than he was sometimes.
“Okay… so. Why does this make you conclude I have to draw their blood samples? Isn’t it much better to get them checked up on in the hospital with professional care? As far as I know, this city’s hospital ain’t bad.”
“It’s not going to cost you an arm and a leg.” She rolled her eyes at his overreaction. “I don’t need a single strand of hair from you. At least not right now. I just need some blood samples. Remember when you left me to monitor your kidnapped subordinates a while back?”
“I had to intervene after they first got out of that expression. Medically. And before you snap at me, one of them had a fever bad enough it would’ve caused brain damage if I let it be until a proper doctor could see to them.”
Hopefully, he wouldn’t overreact. She had a history with such things.
“Anyway, some of the stuff I had with me were experimental. That is, not yet approved for human consumption.” History, indeed. “Considering it’s been a good few months, I don’t think anything went wrong but I still want the data. So go get both their blood samples and do not, under any circumstances, reveal my involvement.”
“Oh.. I see, I see. So that’s how it is–”
“YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?!”
Yep. He was yelling and overreacting. Just as you expected him to, Haibara. But really, what made you think he would happily go along with this? Not to mention you lied about it only taking 5 minutes of his time! They would never go along with this.
“Why on earth do you have the idea Art and Shirogane will agree to this?!”
Don’t you pull the whole guilt tripping number of your on me, Kudou. Those kicked puppy eyes only work on C-ta and you’re not even six anymore.Partners or not. Everyone gets to do their own joke.
And you really need some professional help for your kleptomania. You don’t go borrowing people’s credit cards. With or without permission. Take five minutes to reread the terms use instead of 1001 Ways to Identify Lethal Poisons in Liquid State. Besides, there’s a certain charm in watching you part with your cash in a luxury shop full of female accessories.
Anyway, she let the letter opener go to tremble eerily and threw a dismissive glance at the box.
“You do know Conan sulks for days whenever he so much as smells other animals on me, right? I’d need compromise my research time to keep Kid out of his paws. Not to mention my curtains.”
Her cat turned out rather spoiled. Much like a certain someone he was named after. Still, she could use this.
“How about I do it in exchange for a tiny tiny favor that wouldn’t even take five minutes of your time? It’ll be to your advantage as well.”
There it was… Haibara’s devil side. Couldn’t she be reliable for once and just listen to his requests? And what was with all this ‘Conan this, Conan that’ junk? For a minute, he forgot the tiny brunette had a cat of her own at her apartment. God. To think this is what will happen when you give her a cat. He has a hedgehog of his own that needs to be taken care of!
“A favour?” This was super suspicious. No, dangerous, even. But in order to get Haibara’s help, he had to listen. There was nothing else he could do about it. “What is it?” He finally dared to ask, gulping and expecting all kinds of crazy guinea pig-like tasks.
