Loving all the speculation - I’m still in the soak up information phase and have nothing but vague feelings. Agree the brother seems suspicious! As does 島田. They might just be mystery freaks themselves - or they might be sussing out 江南 degree of (non) involvement in the 千織’s death.
How does that make him more or less suspicious? People react more or less strongly to alcohol on an individual basis, so I didn’t really think much of it to be honest.
I’m basing this on these two passages:
千織は市内にある母方の祖父の家に住んでおり、葬儀もそこで執り行なわれた。だが、あの時の喪主の名は「青司」ではなかったように思う。
紅さんに姪がいるってことは知ってたし、学校へ行く都合で和枝夫人の実家に預けられていたことも聞いている。
But I may be misunderstanding, and she just lived with the grandparents in order to be able to go to school.
If she was alive at the time of her parents’ death she would have inherited the island, not the brother. So she was probably killed before. Yet apparently the father wasn’t at her funeral. I’m still very confused by the timeline, and by the fact that no one has yet talked about either party’s reaction to the other’s death, whichever came first.
So, I will preface this by saying it is a wild leap of logic (my favorite kind): Because 千織 also had an, err, ‘issue’ with alcohol, I was like “hmm…genetic component?”
So I went poking around. 千織’s death is stated to be 昨年の一月の出来事だった by 江南 and earlier, when カー is being a moany brat complaining to ポウ he says this about the 中村清司 case:
去年あんな事件があったからって、別にいま面白いことがあるわけじゃない。
But I agree the lack of reactions is interesting.
I thought we had two weeks to read chapter 2… I’ll have to catch up once I finish reading the other book I’m reading.
Oh no, sorry if there was any confusion! The schedule up til week 6 is at the top of the weekly threads and then there will be a vote for the pacing of the final weeks. The Prologue + Chapter 1 were two weeks due to length and @omk3 rightly calling out that the hardest part of books is usually the opening / scene setting.
Thankfully these next two weeks are lower page counts. Looking forward to hearing your speculation! 
Ack, I’m behind a week. >.< Got caught up with other books last week, so I’m aiming to catch up this week.
Nope! Completely my fault not reading things properly. I’ll start joining in on the discussions again once I’ve caught up!
Okay! Read week 3’s chapter, so I’m clear to finally start week 4, haha. Enjoyed reading everyone’s thoughts here; I’m adding myself to the “島田 is hella suspicious” team. I also thought it was a little weird 紅次郎 didn’t seem to have much reaction to a letter arriving saying that his niece was murdered? Like, he clearly didn’t want to talk about his brother’s death, but he didn’t seem especially choked up about 千織.
As for 島田 calling 江南 コナン… I don’t like it. Could just be a cute bit of wordplay from the author, but 江南’s 研究会 name was ドイル; way too coincidental.
Wow, well observed! I never made the connection!!!
I noticed that as well - might be a hint that 島田’s more involved than he lets on! I hope it means something, but it’s fun as a coincidence, too.
In fact, I merely thought that maybe this possible reading of his name was why he was gifted the name of Doyle by the club. Which would be fun, but I certainly wouldn’t mind a deeper meaning. 
I think it was just 島田 (and the author) having a bit of fun. He did say he really likes mysteries, which is why he wants to help 江南.
江南 also being read as コナン also explains why he was called ドイル in the club.
Buuuuut I also agree 島田 is fishy af.
Does anyone else read 江南 as コナン every time 島田 says his name? I had a bit of fun switching between the two.
Japanese observation, but this book has a lot of great advanced vocabulary and even some I’ve never seen before that go beyond N1.
I even noticed two words which use kanji that aren’t used anymore.
体軀 for 体躯 (たいく) physique
冒瀆 for 冒涜 (ぼうとく) blasphemy (this was from the start of chapter 3)
(I love it!)
I just had a thought, are most people using an e-reader with a built-in dictionary or something?
Is 抽斗 for 引き出し all that common? That one definitely took me by surprise. (Wait, that actually appears in the next chapter, my bad. The question still stands.)
Yep, e-reader for me.
Yep, for me too - I’d definitely struggle without it for this one! I have quite a few J-J dictionaries and also some J-E dictionaries installed so I like to try my luck with the monolingual definition first and then fall back to the English definition of needed. Adds a little time but I quite like doing it!
Woah! That’s such a cool kanji! And no, it’s not common at all XD
Android tablet, kiwi browser, ttu web reader, yomichan… 
Yep, did that too! One of the joys of reading in Japanese! 
I use the built in dictionary on Kindle, but I don’t like it.
