Japan

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...Read more

Kazuya Takino leads a quiet life running a supermarket in the Tokyo suburbs. But when an extortionist tries to force him out of business, he finds himself drawn into the yakuza underworld-a world he once called home and thought he had left behind. Pursuing him is Detective Takagi,...Read more

Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news – the son of one of the island’s most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger – with his last words,...Read more

Amid the rubble of post-war Tokyo, inside the grand Tsubaki house, a once-noble family is in mourning.

The old viscount Tsubaki, a brooding, troubled composer, has been found dead.

When the family gather for a divination to conjure the spirit of their departed...Read more

The novel starts in the 1960s when 17 people die of cyanide poisoning at a party given by the owners of a prominent clinic in a town on the coast of the Sea of Japan. The only surviving links to what might have happened are a cryptic verse that could be the killer's, and the physician's...Read more

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions...Read more

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is...Read more

Three friends witness a terrifying fire that kills a Japanese painter when they are very young, and after growing up with the memory, one of them could be responsible for a chain of deadly arsonsRead more

An old friend of Kosuke Kindaichi's invites the scruffy detective to visit the remote mountain village of Onikobe in order to look into a twenty-year-old murder case. But no sooner has Kindaichi arrived than a new series of murders strikes the village - several bodies are discovered staged...Read more

Beneath the sheen of its orderly streets and obedient populace, all is not well in the port city of Kobe. Business is as brisk as the Haru-ichiban spring breeze for Mami Suzuki, hotel clerk by day, private investigator by night.

Who's stealing from Japan's biggest pearl trader?...Read more

Ever since a horrific car accident, Fujinuma Kiichi has lived a reclusive existence in the remote Mill House, his scarred face hidden behind a rubber mask. Then one stormy night the tranquility of his retreat is shattered by gruesome murder, a baffling disappearance and the theft of a...Read more

Winner of the Mystery Writers of Japan Award and the Honkaku Mystery Prize. Osaka, 1943. The Second World War rages, and American bombers rain down death upon Japan. The once prosperous Omari household, now ruined by the terrible conflict, is struck by a succession of ghastly murders. Young...Read more

Fierce, mixed-race fighter Shindo has been kidnapped by the yakuza. After brutally beating most of them in an attempt to escape, she is forced to work as a bodyguard to protect the gang boss's sheltered daughter Shoko, a strange, friendless eighteen-year-old who could order Shindo's death...Read more

Four twenty-somethings share an apartment in Tokyo. In Parade each tells their story: their lives, their hopes and fears, their loves, their secrets.

Kotomi waits by the phone for a boyfriend who never calls. Ryosuke wants someone that he can’t have. Mirai spends her...Read more