This week, Cel Shaded takes the Random Plugging route.

Those of you who read the column regularly know that Random Plugging is the part of the column where I—or tag-team partner in fandom Wilma J., on occasion—talk about whatever anime, manga or related media are capturing my attention in a particular week. It's a way of alleviating the backlog of titles that we have available to review, which, last time I checked, hovered somewhere around that mythical number cited in childhood arguments of “;ukubillion infinity plus one.”;

So it's in that interest that we present these Random Plugging reviews that have been sitting in the archives for a little while now ...

'In Odd We Trust'

Odd Thomas is a pancake cook with the ability to see the spirits of the dead. He's also the featured character in a series of novels by Dean Koontz. With the help of Queenie Chan, artist of Tokyopop's original English language manga series “;The Dreaming,”; Odd's now the star of an OEL manga as well: Del Rey's “;In Odd We Trust.”;

If the purpose was to get curious manga fans to check out Koontz's novels, well, mission accomplished. The story, in which Odd and his girlfriend, Stormy, track down a stalker who killed a 7-year-old boy and looks to kill again, was complex enough to get me interested in reading the first novel in the series. And then the ending to the novel depressed me immensely. But that's a story best left for another, non-manga-centered column.

“;In Odd We Trust”; probably won't change the minds of those who feel OEL manga isn't “;real”; manga. But for anyone looking for a good story in a single volume, step right up.

'Case Closed' vol. 25

And now, a little something from Wilma:

Regular readers know that I am a huge fan of mystery books. Among those series, and one that I've written about before, is “;Case Closed”; by Gosho Aoyama.

The latest book, volume 25, which came out earlier this month, is the best I've read in some time. The Osaka gang—teen sleuth Harley Hartwell and his kinda-sorta love interest, Kazuha—makes an appearance alongside Conan, Rachel and Richard in a series of killings that's as tangled as the threads of their mythical opponent, the Spider Mistress, and also puts the detectives in danger in more ways than one.

Then the Junior Detective League has a run-in with a murderous gang while exploring a labyrinth of caves that puts Conan out of commission. With the boy's life at stake, the other members have to put their heads together and solve the riddle of the caves quickly before the gang catches them—all without genius Conan's input.

That case ends on a not-all-that-surprising note that makes you want to jump straight to volume 26 to see how that particular development will pan out.

It's a really exciting mix of danger and romance—though perhaps off-putting at times with its reliance on specific parts of Japanese culture that many U.S. readers might not identify with—and the focus on characters that are normally out of the spotlight puts a nice spin on the stories.