Issue I'm now starting to take as well...Van Zieks is a moron. So much of the stuff he's surprised by is such obvious foregone conclusions even by the standards of the character's back and forth dialogue. Like, he didn't make the connection about the metal piece possibly being the knife tip until actually touching them together even though you've been TALKING about a knife tip breaking and he'd ALREADY seen the metal piece you found? His character is not presented like that should be a thing he would have to realize. There are other small inconsistencies in his skills likes this.
Also and this is aimed at everyone in the case "how do you expect us to believe she caught the book?" fucking really? She picked the book up is the huge, FINAL piece of evidence to present for this, this absolutely obvious shit from the second the photo was first presented hours ago, and everyone is freaking out about and Naruhodo thinks is going to doom the day??
I dunno, maybe it's just been too long and all the other AA games have stuff like this too that didn't bother me at the time. Maybe other games I have played since then with more legitimate mysteries have made me less tolerant of how drawn out this stuff can be, especially in this particular case where the stakes are SO low. Right now, just going by old memories, I'd say this is probably one of the worst cases in AA as a whole. Not THE worst, of course, but up there.