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With a reputation in Japan to rival Agatha Christie’s, the master of ingenious plotting is finally on the case for anglophone readers
A Japanese village in 1937 is shocked by a gruesome murder – a newlywed couple found shut away in a room “soaked in the crimson of their own blood”, a bloody samurai sword thrust in the snow outside. Scruffy amateur sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi is called in: can he solve the locked-room mystery?
Kindaichi, the creation of the revered Japanese detective novelist Seishi Yokomizo, made his first appearance in 1946, solving, with typical flair, the fiendish conundrum of The Honjin Murders. That novel won Yokomizo the first Mystery Writers of Japan award in 1948. Kindaichi went on to star in another 76 novels, selling more than 55m books and appearing in numerous television and stage adaptations. Continue reading...