KindlePrintReviews

Soul Cage

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Written by Tetsuya Honda, translated by Giles Murray — On some scaffolding nine storeys above the Tokyo skyline, an unnamed narrator is having an exchange with Tadaharu Mishima, a deadbeat dad and sometimes construction work who has a pachinko problem. They are on their lunch break….
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KindlePrintReviews

The Ginza Ghost and Other Stories

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Written by Keikichi Osaka, translated by Ho-Ling Wong — Tokyo has changed a great deal in the past century or so. There have been two catastrophic earthquakes, heavy bombing during World War II, and spiralling property prices that led to an eventual collapse. On the…
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iBookKindlePrintReviews

Blue Light Yokohama

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Written by Nicolas Obregon – What an entertaining debut! Told almost exclusively from the perspective of Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Inspector Kosuke Iwata, it’s a multilayered police procedural involving murder, official corruption, and dangerous secrets. A brief prologue set in 1996 describes the death of…
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PrintReviews

Deep Red

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Written by Hisashi Nozawa, translated by Asumi Shibata — Kanako Akiba is 11 years old and just like any other sixth-grader, laughing with her friends and sharing scary stories late at night on thespring trip. But when her teacher barges in and tells her she’s been…
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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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