スパイラル (Spiral ~Bond of Inference~)
TV series, 25 episodes, by J.C. Staff and Sony
Spiral is in many ways another "normal person meets people with a horrible secret"-anime. It revolves around the young amateur detective Narumi Ayumu, whose brother mysteriously disappeared some years ago and left his wife with him.
Time passes, and Ayumu himself suddenly becomes entangled in his brother's investigation as an unexpected assasination attempt happens right next to him.
Now, together with his sister-in-law Narumi Madoka and school newspaper journalist and "perfect girlfriend" Yuizaki Hiyono, he must unveil the secret of the mysterious Blade Children to prevent more murders from happening and find his brother!
The plot(s) of the series is vaguely similar to something taken out of an Agatha Christie-novel, with the characters pursuing the ongoing mystery to unravel the probably totally unthinkable and equally unlikely solution. The way in which the characters some times ignore all human sense of reason to follow some sort of hidden pattern laid out by the scriptwriters can sometimes get too unlikely to be funny. Anyone who's watched Hikaru no Go, Love Hina or basically any hentai movie should know what I'm talking about.
This does in no way degrade the series' artistic value, though, and the main characters Ayumu and Hiyono's antics really make watching the series a worthwhile experience.