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One minute, silly Heather Badcock had been gabbing on to her movie idol, the glamorous Marina Gregg. The next, Heather suffered a massive seizure. It turned out to be a deadly poison. But for whom was it really intended? Marina’s frozen expression suggested she had witnessed something horrific. While others searched for material evidence, Jane Marple conducted a very different investigation – into human nature.

A triumph by Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992), the master of Japanese mystery writing. A beautifully written novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation. Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uehara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by an intermediary. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Keito travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenishi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance. She discovers that he had been a police officer in Tokyo after the war, keeping watch over pan pan girls, Japanese prostitutes catering to GIs. Some of these women have created a new life in Kanazawa and may have taken extreme measures to hide their past.

In the wee hours of a 1960s Tokyo morning, a dead body is found under the rails of a train, and the victim’s face is so badly damaged that police have a hard time figuring out the victim’s identity. Only two clues surface: an old man, overheard talking in a distinctive accent to a young man, and the word “kameda.” Inspector Imanishi leaves his beloved bonsai and his haiku and goes off to investigate—and runs up against a blank wall. Months pass in fruitless questioning, in following up leads, until the case is closed, unsolved. But Imanishi is dissatisfied, and a series of coincidences lead him back to the case. Why did a young woman scatter pieces of white paper out of the window of a train? Why did a bar girl leave for home right after Imanishi spoke to her? Why did an actor, on the verge of telling Imanishi something important, drop dead of a heart attack? What can a group of nouveau young artists possibly have to do with the murder of a quiet and “saintly” provincial old ex-policemen? Inspector Imanishi investigates.

Ichiro Honda is a good-looking computer expert who works in Tokyo, lives in a respectable hotel, and visits his wife, in Osaka with her wealthy father, only on weekends. Behind this unexceptional facade, his life is dedicated to the conquest of a never-ending succession of young women; a secret apartment facilitates his many phony identities, a diary records each seduction. Over the next months, three of Honda's bedmates are murdered. He's eventually convicted of two of the killings. The evidence against him--in part, blood and semen traces, lack of alibis and his diary--seems solid as granite, but elderly Kentaro Hatanaka, his appeal lawyer, is a man of sensitivity, tenacity and imagination. He needs all of those qualities to get to the surprise spider in this tightly woven web. Full of subtly menacing tensions and sharp psychological insights, told in lean, sparsely ornamented style. This one is a must for the discerning reader. - kirkus reviews

In postwar Tokyo, the K Apartment House for ladies is about to be moved intact in a highly publicized engineering feat. Then, flashback seven years to one of its occupants and her confederate--a man dressed in woman's clothes--as they bury a child's body in an unused communal bath beneath the building. A second flashback tells of the kidnapping of four-year-old George Kraft, son of an American army officer and his Japanese wife. The stage is set. The actors are a few of the present-day occupants of the K apartments--single, lovely, obsessed, neurotic--each life a novel in itself, told in a spare, unembellished style that never lapses into the sentimental. Manipulated by hidden strings, their actions and reactions lead to suicide, murder, and some final surprising revelations. This is a fresh, original novel, superbly crafted and riveting from start to finish.

The Crooked House sits on a snowbound cliff at the remote northern tip of Japan. A curious place to build a house, but even more curious is the house itself - a maze of sloping floors and strange staircases, full of bloodcurdling masks and uncanny dolls. When a guest is found murdered in seemingly impossible circumstances, the police are called. But they are unable to solve the puzzle, and more bizarre deaths follow. Enter Kiyoshi Mitarai, the renowned sleuth. Surely if anyone can crack these cryptic murders it is him. But you have all the clues too - can you solve the mystery of the murders in The Crooked House first?

Astrologer, fortuneteller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must in one week solve a mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years. Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, the supreme woman? With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion, pieced together like a great stage tragedy, challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain. The Tokyo Zodiac Murders joins a new wave of Japanese murder mysteries being translated into English.

This second half of Lady Joker, by Kaoru Takamura, the Grand Dame of Japanese crime fiction, concludes the breathtaking saga introduced in Volume One. Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case which terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines the circumstances of this watershed episode in modern Japanese history and brings into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes and the villains. As the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are brought to light, the stakes rise, and some of the professionals we have watched try to fight their way through this crisis will lose everything—some even their lives. Will the culprits ever be brought to justice? More importantly—what is justice?

One of Japan’s great modern masters, Kaoru Takamura, makes her English-language debut with this two-volume publication of her magnum opus. Tokyo, 1995. Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his race; a struggling single dad of a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who has died suspiciously after the revelation of a family connection with the segregated buraku community, historically subjected to severe discrimination. Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers. Inspired by the unsolved true-crime kidnapping case perpetrated by "the Monster with 21 Faces", Lady Joker has become a cultural touchstone since its 1997 publication, acknowledged as the magnum opus by one of Japan’s literary masters, twice adapted for film and TV and often taught in high school and college classrooms.

While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wife—who was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetings—ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood? When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife’s death he discovers the villa Tachibana near by, a house known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life...

In una cala rocciosa della baia di Hakata, i corpi di un uomo e di una donna vengono rinvenuti all’alba. Entrambi sono giovani e belli. Il colorito acceso delle guance rivela che hanno assunto del cianuro. Un suicidio d’amore, non ci sono dubbi. La polizia di Fukuoka sembra quasi delusa: niente indagini, niente colpevole. Ma, almeno agli occhi di Torigai Jutaro, vecchio investigatore dall’aria indolente e dagli abiti logori, e del suo giovane collega di Tokyo, Mihara Kiichi, qualcosa non torna: se i due sono arrivati con il medesimo rapido da Tokyo, perché mai lui, Sayama Ken’ichi, funzionario di un ministero al centro di un grosso scandalo per corruzione, è rimasto cinque giorni chiuso in albergo in attesa di una telefonata? E perché poi se n’è andato precipitosamente lasciando una valigia? Ma soprattutto: dov’era intanto lei, l’amante, la seducente Otoki, che di professione intratteneva i clienti in un ristorante? Bizzarro comportamento per due che hanno deciso di farla finita. Per fortuna sia Torigai che Mihara diffidano delle idee preconcette, e sono dotati di una perseveranza e di un intuito fuori del comune. Perché chi ha ordito quella gelida, impeccabile macchinazione è una mente diabolica, capace di capovolgere la realtà. Non solo: è un genio nella gestione del tempo. Con questo noir dal fascino ossessivo, tutto incentrato su orari e nomi di treni – un congegno perfetto che ruota intorno a una manciata di minuti –, Matsumoto ha firmato un’indagine impossibile, ma anche un libro allusivo, che sa con sottigliezza far parlare il Giappone.

A bewildering locked-room murder occurs as an amateur crime writer investigates strange events in the Chizurui mansion in this prizewinning classic Japanese mystery. This ingenously constructed masterpiece, written by one of Japan’s most celebrated crime writers and translated into English for the first time, is perfect for locked-room mystery fans who can’t resist a breathtaking conclusion. In the Chizurui family mansion, a haunting presence casts a shadow over its residents. By night, an eerie figure, clad in a sinister Hannya mask is seen roaming around the house. An amateur murder mystery writer, Akimitsu Takagi, is sent to investigate — but his investigation takes a harrowing turn as tragedy strikes the Chizurui family. Within the confines of a locked study, the head of the family is found dead, with only an ominous Hannya mask lying on the floor by his side and the lingering scent of jasmine in the air as clues to his mysterious murder. As Takagi delves deeper into the perplexing case, he discovers a tangled web of secrets and grudges. Can he discover the link between the family and the curse of the Hannya mask? Who was the person who called the undertaker and asked for three coffins on the night of the murder? And do those three coffins mean the curse of the Hannya mask is about to strike again? The Noh Mask Murder’s legendary ending offers locked-room mystery fans the perfect coda to an ingenously constructed mystery.

Early one morning, a body is found lying next to the railway tracks just outside of Kuki Station in Saitama Prefecture, shot dead. It is identified as belonging to the owner of a local mill which is embroiled in a labour dispute. Suspicion initially falls on the workers' union, then on a new religious sect that has been gaining followers recently. Chief Inspector Onitsura and his assistant Tanna are called in to investigate, and soon set off in a journey across Japan, from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka, and finally to the island of Kyushu, in a hunt for the killer. But as they investigate, the killer strikes again, and again. Will they be able to catch the murderer before even more people are slain?

A spiritual companion to Strange Pictures and a bestselling horror phenomenon in Japan —mysterious spaces, trap doors, windowless children's rooms . . . something is wrong with this house. Can you solve the "mystery" of its floor plan? A writer fascinated by the macabre is approached by an acquaintance who is considering purchasing a second-hand house in Tokyo. With its bright and spacious interior, the home seems perfect. But looking closer, the building’s floor plan reveals a mysterious "dead space” hidden between the walls. Seeking a second opinion, the writer shares the floor plan with an architect friend only to discover more “strange spaces” dotted across the house. What are these mysterious “strange spaces” and why do they exist—are they really there, or is there something off with the floor plan? Who is the home’s former resident who suddenly disappeared? The freelance writer and his architect friend can’t resist the challenge of solving the riddle of these puzzling floor plans . . . and the terrifying plot behind it all.

A classic Japanese mystery – a pair of sleuths investigate a series of bloody murders in 19th century Tokyo. Japan, 1869. A time of reform and rebellion. Detectives Kazuki and Kawaji are assigned to investigate a series of seemingly impossible murders. Together with the help of a mysterious shrine maiden, can they solve each gruesome death and piece together the dark connection between them? Taking us deep into the heart of 19th century Tokyo, The Meiji Guillotine Murders is a fiendish murder mystery from one of Japan’s greatest crime writers.