The Moai Island Puzzle
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…
The Silent Dead
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…
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
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…
Listen to two free chapters of Six Four
Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four is going to be one of the biggest books of 2016. Literally. The hardback comes in at 635 pages and as you can see it’s a book that stands up on its own. You could even say it’s the printed equivalent of six-four,…
First look: Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
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…
Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashion
Translated by Alexander O Smith — It’s no exaggeration to say that Keigo Higashino is a phenomenon in Japan. Popular and multi-award winning, he’s been putting out books steadily for the past 30 years, which means there’s a rich vein of potential translations to mine. Journey Under…
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada
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…