The year is 1953. The Korean War is winding down. The Cold War is heating up. The United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb the year before. Godzilla will make his debut a year later. UFOs are appearing all over the world. And in Ranpo Edogawa's latest novel, five flying saucers zoom across the skies of Tokyo.

A day after that incident, a woodsman stumbles out of the forest to report the landing of an alien spacecraft in the mountains southwest of Tokyo. A month later, Ichiro Hirano's next-door neighbor goes missing. And then reappears as abruptly as he vanished, claiming was kidnapped by a lizard creature from outer space.

That same lizard creature is now stalking the pretty and talented sister of Ichiro's best friend. What in the world is going on? What do the aliens want? And where did they come from? These are the kind of questions that only master sleuth Kogoro Akechi and the Boy Detectives Club can hope to answer.