Tetsuya Honda will get you hooked on Japanese crime fiction. The Silent Dead centres on the case of a mutilated body found in a suburban fishpond. The death is being investigated by young homicide detective Lieutenant Reiko Himekawa. As in the UK and the US, the Tokyo force is a male-dominated environment but Reiko is a rising star. She finds evidence of torture on the corpse, and possibly a ritual element to the killing. As the body count increases, so does competition between Reiko and male detectives trying to knock her off her perch.

You’ll be wrapped up in this police procedural from the off – and perhaps that’s why the series is such a hit in Japan, and has been made into a TV series (BBC4, take note…). Read our full review here.