I feel like this particular katakana phonetic transcription is subconsciously influencing you.
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It’s an interesting thought! I was thinking about how dear readers last saw the thief hand-in hand with the cook running upstairs to escape the police (I thought it was nice he didn’t ditch the cook).
But - a couple of weeks ago I spent some time exploring Edogawa Ranpo’s life: he moved 46 times! In the manga Detective Conan, first name - Edogawa - is a nod to Ranpo… And in his later years, Ranpo helped Junichi Iwata (岩田準一) a friend/anthropologist assemble the first (only?) and most extensive historical collection of Japanese homoerotic (男色 nanshoku or “male colors”) literature. Iwata is apparently considered a pioneer in this field. They hunted through bookstores traveling all over the country, looking for this kind of literature. It seems they collected examples going all the way back to the Nihon Shoki (c 720). Here is an in-depth post about it (a lot of this article/field of study went over my head, but is fascinating). So maybe Ranpo’s interest may explain the vibe you picked up in this week’s reading? 
Or not, I don’t know!
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Ooh, thanks for the interesting facts! They are definitely encouraging me to double down on my gay romance theory. 
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I also was surprised to see 小林 give up the pistol so easily. But I guess 二十面相 never kills people, so he wasn’t worried about giving a gun to his captor? 二十面相 would have done better to ask for the diamonds back first, given that 小林 got rescued so quickly.
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