Review by New York Times Review
SOLVING ONE OF Keigo Higashino's fiendishly difficult mysteries must be very gratifying. (I wouldn't know, since this Japanese puzzlemeister consistently outwits me.) In Giles Murray's translation of NEWCOMER (Minotaur, $27.99), Higashino's fabled Tokyo Metropolitan Police detective, Kyoichiro Kaga, he of the "razor-sharp mind and bloodhound nature," has been dispatched to the Nihonbashi precinct to investigate the inexplicable murder of a middle-aged woman who lived alone and seemed to have no enemies. Kaga directs his inquiries to Amazake Alley, a narrow street of small stores with loads of charm. ("Few other districts in the capital had shops that specialized in wicker suitcases or shamisen lutes.") In each of these businesses, Kaga finds some minor mystery to solve: Why did the clock shop owner's dog get lost on his walk? Who bought the cakes found at the crime scene? "I notice details," Kaga explains. "That's the sort of person I am." The characters, it must be said, are thinner than the dough used to create those delicate pastries; but in a fair exchange, the author has succeeded in making problem-solving logistics sexy. Since Kaga plucks all his clues from minor background details, their trivial nature is itself important. As Higashino notes, "The precinct detective had looked into things that the rest of them had dismissed as insignificant." Things like where you choose to sit in a taxi or whether you like sweets or who gave the victim a new pair of kitchen scissors. In addition to illustrating the subtlety of the author's narrative style, these minutiae add up to a tidy and quite credible solution. Not that I saw it coming. STEPHEN KELLY'S NEW Inspector Lamb novel, hushed in death (Pegasus Crime, $25.95), would seem to push all my buttons - and possibly yours. It's a traditional mystery set in 1942 in a British country house that's been reconfigured as a sanitarium for military men suffering the "traumatic effects of combat." There's a murder on the very first page and plenty of suspects (or possible additional victims) among the patients and staff. There's even a ghost! Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb of the Hampshire Constabulary, who served on the Somme in the previous war, cuts a dashing figure as the sleuth in charge of the investigation. And Dr. Frederick Hornby, director of Elton House, was at Ypres. Both men still have nightmares filled with the faces of the dead. The setup is so familiar and so calculated that it's impossible not to feel manipulated. But it's the writing that really grates. "I left the house and came up the path from the village, as I usually do," the housekeeper begins. And then, dear reader, I fell asleep. IF YOU'RE GOING to write a theater mystery, who better to bump off than a theater critic? In her comic novel, ASHOT IN THE DARK (Bloomsbury, paper, $17), Lynne Truss does the dastardly deed during a performance of "A Shilling in the Meter," a slice-of-life drama being given a tryout production at a seedy theater in Brighton in 1957. A properly loathsome person, the famed and feared A. S. Crystal has already started writing his review on the train down from London, and a nasty piece of work it is too. But before the review can be published - indeed, before the play has ended - Crystal is shot dead. The mystery takes an amusing turn once the clever young Constable Peregrine Twitten starts second-guessing his superiors. "You are an impetuous, arrogant pipsqueak," shouts the detective in charge, who tries to fire him before realizing he could use this pipsqueak's supersize brain to his own advantage. We should be hearing more from this clever young know-it-all. CHILDREN have A way of softening up even the most hardboiled antiheroes. They don't come much tougher than Ken Bruen's Irish roughneck, Jack Taylor, a man with bad habits who does good despite himself. Jack can't escape from other people's children in Bruen's latest novel, IN THE GALWAY SILENCE (Mysterious Press, $26), which finds Mr. Tough Guy ("I'm not great with kids") babysitting for his girlfriend's 9-year-old son. "The boy was small with blond hair," he observes, which makes young Joffrey sound nonthreatening even for the child-averse Jack. But the kid is a world-class whiner with a perpetually curled lip, "from attitude rather than design." As if regular outings with Joffrey, who is staying with relatives while his mother is away, weren't penance enough for his many sins, this dangerously hotheaded private detective agrees to find out who murdered a rich Frenchman's twin sons. It's not the kind of case Jack would normally take, but the way these men were killed - ducttaped to a wheelchair, their mouths sealed with superglue, then tossed into a river - probably appealed to his sense of the hideously absurd. But it's another case, involving kidnapping and pedophilia, that really riles Jack, who, despite his macho posturing, is one of those decent souls who are sickened by cruelty to children, even a little brat like Joffrey. MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 14, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Unorthodox Tokyo detective Kyoichiro Kaga (introduced in Malice , 2014) has been reassigned to the Nihonbashi precinct and is still acquainting himself with the quaint premodern neighborhood when another newcomer, Mineko Mitsui, is found strangled in her apartment. The savvy killer has left no trace of himself, leaving Kaga and the lead detective, Uesugi, to mine clues from the inconsistencies of Mineko's last day. While Uesugi employs more direct questioning, Kaga unexpectedly pops up into Nihonbashi's traditional Japanese shops, where his seemingly simple questions unmask family secrets, hidden loyalties, and heartbreak. In Kaga's capable hands, a box of wasabi-laced sweets, a pair of kitchen shears, a witness' incongruous statement, Mineko's last visit to her regular pastry shop, and a child's toy become breadcrumbs leading to a killer. Kaga's second investigation is a cerebral puzzler's delight that, like Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mysteries, offers a thought-provoking take on the tension between modernity and traditional culture and leaves a trail of mended relationships in its wake.--Christine Tran Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Higashino's satisfying second novel featuring Kyoichiro Kaga to be published in English (after 2014's Malice), the Columbo-like Tokyo police detective pursues loose ends in the case of the strangulation murder of Mineko Mitsui, a divorcee estranged from her only child, whose friends insisted that "she was the last person on earth to have enemies." Kaga believes that his responsibilities as a homicide investigator extend to finding ways to comfort those traumatized by violent crime. He begins with a family that runs a store that sells rice crackers to ascertain whether an insurance salesman who claimed he was in Mineko's apartment shortly before her death on business had an alibi. Other threads include the identity of the person who bought an assortment of pastries found at the scene of the crime, and why the dead woman purchased an expensive pair of kitchen scissors. Although the solution is less elaborate than those in the author's Detective Galileo novels, the end result is a police procedural puzzle mystery that comes across as more realistic. (Nov.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this latest by seasoned suspense author Higashino (Under the Midnight Sun; The Devotion of Suspect X), Detective Kaga visits local business owners to learn who murdered Mineko Mitsui, a recent transplant to the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo. Instead of fading into the background as Kaga gets closer to the truth, these shopkeepers form the core of the novel-think a Law & Order episode dominated by the quiet dramas of the bit players. Most of their lives touched Mineko's only briefly, if at all, yet each gives Kaga a clearer picture of the woman and reveals that beneath its sedate surface, Nihonbashi bubbles with family secrets, joys, and pains. Though the discovery of the murderer's identity isn't shocking, the journey there is rewarding. Readers seeking a thriller full of abrupt twists and grisly violence may be disappointed, but many will appreciate Higashino's graceful prose and willingness to push the limits of the genre. VERDICT For fans of the author, Seicho- Matsumoto, and other writers of deliberately paced mysteries. [See Prepub Alert, 5/14/18; "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 8/18.]-Mahnaz Dar, Library Journal © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Demoted back to local policing from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's Homicide Division, Kyochiro Kaga (Malice, 2014) makes a deep impression on the quiet Nihonbashi Precinct.The girl at the rice cracker shop is probably the first to notice Kaga's novel approach to investigation. Rather than focusing on the crime scene in Kodenmacho where Mineko Mitsui was found strangled in her apartment, Kaga begins by looking at the rhythms of the street. Why do businessmen walking from the Hamacho neighborhood to the Ningyocho subway station still have their jackets on, while the men coming from Ningyocho have them slung over their shoulders? Naho Kamikawa, the shopkeeper's granddaughter, feigns indifference as she sits sipping her banana juice with Kaga, but still she's impressed at his perceptiveness. So are Yoriko, owner of a traditional restaurant down the street, and Akifumi, the apprentice at irascible Mr. Terada's clock shop. As author Higashino describes Kaga's incursion into the lives he finds at each of the street's small shops, he seems to be crafting a chain of tiny, gemlike short storiesuntil the tales start intersecting, scaffolding on one another, and eventually creating a bridge between the lives of the longtime residents of Kodenmacho and the death of a woman who, for her own private reasons, chose to live in this obscure quarter of one of the world's busiest cities.Part Sherlock Holmes, part Harry Bosch, Higashino's hero is a quietly majestic force to be reckoned with. Here's hoping his demotion continues to bring him to the attention of readers from East to West. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
