I feel the same way about Batman comics sometimes, Bruce, but I keep coming back too.

Batman, being a detective in the past: Hmm, this millionaire was murdered, in a locked room! But how...my only clue, is this broken saxophone reed! Batman, being a detective in the present: 147 people have just been murdered, and now I have to crack this international terrorist ring before they destroy London! I'm only slightly exaggerating, and I feel like I'm going to seem way harder on this book than I may actually be: from 2021, Batman: the Detective #1, written by Tom Taylor, art by Andy Kubert. This is the fancy 1-in-25 retailer exclusive Riccardo Federici cover, but we're still cramming it in the scanner!

This isn't in regular continuity, but it may have taken me a while to realize it. It opens with a group of terrorists, in white Batman cowls, blowing up a plane; telling the victims this was Batman's fault. The terrorists bail out, with the current Knight of England still trying to fight them, and she's hurt on the landing and then shot. Back in Gotham, an older, and less suave than usual Batman wonders, what has he actually accomplished? Has he stopped crime, made Gotham safer, or even made it a better place to live? No, no, and um, no. He felt he had saved people, individuals, and that was about it. There is a page of Bruce, leaving Wayne Manor, and wondering if he would ever return; that I thought was from current, Alfred-less continuity. Bruce is stubbled and his haircut seems almost military, a far cry from his jet-setting playboy look! But you get the feeling he spends about zero time as 'Bruce,' so...

Investigating the plane crash, Batman is joined by the current Squire, who asks him to check on the Knight: not just question her about what happened, see how she was. They are interrupted by the now-monstrous Gentleman Ghost, who's there to eat the fear of the recently dead, and maybe Batman's as well. He instead gets punched out, which does impress the Squire; as Bats tells the Knight later. But, the cowled terrorists--Equilibrium, one says--attack the hospital, after the Knight. They're tough enough to give Batman pause, although he manages to snare one to shake answers out of later; but Batman does discover something when cross-referencing the list of victims: they had all previously been rescued by Batman. Someone was undoing his work... 

 A good chunk of the rest of the series, is seemingly a redemption arc for Henri Ducard, one of Bruce's trainers, and not the most upstanding of them. We saw him in his debut in Detective Comics #599, midway through 'Blind Justice.' He seemed less ethically gray there, more of a straight baddie: here, Taylor portrays him as maybe occasionally offing somebody, that probably had it coming, which of course wouldn't sit well with Batman either. Ducard does maybe teach Batman something else here, though: manhunting doesn't have to be a solo gig, networking is important! Still, I never love how the stakes in these things has been raised and raised and raised: a mere murder isn't enough anymore, we have to have a planeful just to get things started.