The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

Soji Shimada

Sep 2015 · Pushkin Vertigo Ibhuku elingu-4 · Pushkin Vertigo

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One of The Guardian’s “Top 10 Locked Room Mysteries”

An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this “bloody and bizarre” Japanese crime novel with a twist hailed as “one of the most original” (Daily Mail).

Astrologer, fortune teller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years—in just one week.
 
With the help of his freelance illustrator friend, Kiyoshi sets out to answer the questions that have haunted the country ever since: Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, ‘the perfect woman’?
 
With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion—pieced together like a great stage tragedy—challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain falls.
 
This quintessential Japanese “logic mystery”—eerie, gory, and intriguing—combines the puzzle-solving of Golden Age Western detective fiction with elements of shocking horror and dark humor.

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Born in 1948 in Hiroshima prefecture, Soji Shimada has been dubbed the 'God of Mystery' by international audiences. A novelist, essayist and short-story writer, he made his literary debut in 1981 with The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, which was shortlisted for the Edogawa Rampo Prize. Blending classical detective fiction with grisly violence and elements of the occult, he has gone on to publish several highly acclaimed series of mystery fiction. He is the author of 100+ works in total, including Murder in the Crooked House. In 2009 Shimada received the prestigious Japan Mystery Literature Award in recognition of his life's work.