The sequel series Shin Nazotoki wa Dinner no Ato de begins as a new chapter for the heiress-detective Reiko Houshou and her sharp-tongued butler, Kageyama. The story is set primarily in and around the Kunitachi Police Department, where Reiko continues to work as a homicide detective while hiding her identity as the daughter of the global Houshou Group conglomerate. Joining the team is a new rookie detective, Wakamiya Airi, whose naturally naive and absent-minded personality presents fresh challenges for the veteran officers. Complicating matters further is the return of Reiko’s former superior, the flamboyant Inspector Kazamatsuri Kyōichiro, heir to the Kazamatsuri Motors fortune. After a major blunder led to his transfer to the Metropolitan Police Department, Kazamatsuri has now been demoted and sent back to the Kunitachi station in disgrace.

Despite the changes in the precinct’s lineup, the core dynamic of the investigation remains the same. When faced with impossible-seeming crimes, Reiko reluctantly recounts the details of the case to Kageyama, usually during or after dinner at the Houshou mansion. The ever-composed butler, while lacing his polite speech with brutally honest insults about his mistress’s deductive abilities, proceeds to unravel the mysteries with ease. The new volume presents a collection of five intricate locked-room mysteries and impossible crime scenarios. These include the puzzle of a wealthy family’s son found hanging in a room that was supposedly unoccupied, the baffling death of an antique-loving elderly man discovered inside a locked storehouse with a cryptic blood message, and the murder of a nurse in a shared house where five separate alarm clocks hold the key to the crime. Through each case, Kageyama’s sharp reasoning cuts through the confusion, reaffirming that even with new faces on the force, the truth is always revealed once dinner is served.