KindlePrintReviews

The Moai Island Puzzle

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Written by Alice Arisugawa, translated by Ho-Ling Wong — Golden Age mysteries are formulaic and, far from being a flaw, it’s a major part of their appeal. The stories follow patterns, and the reward for readers is not in being tricked by a new and…
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iBookKindlePrintReviews

The Silent Dead

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Written by Tetsuya Honda, translated by Giles Murray — Recently I lamented the decline of the classic police procedural – but how quickly I’ve been proven wrong. The genre appears truly alive and well, not least of all in Japan, where authors such as Hideo…
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iBookKindlePrintReviews

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

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Translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies — The main attraction of a police procedural is the opportunity for readers to watch the characters develop over a series of short, complex novels – Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, for example, or Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series. Both offer…
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Features

First look: Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

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Here’s an innovative approach to an eye-catching early review copy of a crime novel. It looks, in the picture, just like an ordinary compact cassette from back in the 1980s, but in fact it’s a whopping book of 634 pages – the latest Japanese crime…
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KindlePrintReviews

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada

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Translated by Ross and Shika Mackenzie — Author Soji Shimada, whose groundbreaking 1981 novel has recently been translated afresh by Pushkin Press, is considered the godfather of the Shin-honkaku school of crime fiction in Japan. He inspired the New Orthodox group that aimed to return mystery fiction in…
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Book Club

The Decagon House Murders

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Author Yukito Ayatsuji is part of a group that advocates the use of SS Van Dine’s set of ‘rules’ when it comes to writing crime novels. They’re not followed much by English writers anymore, but Japanese readers have a taste for Golden Age-style crime. Consequently,…
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