Japanese Crime Fiction

*THE JAPANESE CRIME CLASSIC - ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD* 'One of the great masterpieces of Japanese crime fiction and one of the must-read books of this or any year' David Peace Tokyo, 1995. Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep...

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions about the Ichiyanagis around the village. Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi family are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music - death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house.

Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news—the son of one of the island’s most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger—with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters’ lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophesy, and to protect the three women if he can.

WATERSTONES BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2023 PICK The Kamogawa Food Detectives, translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood, is the first book in the bestselling, mouth-watering Japanese sleuthing series for fans of Before the Coffee Gets Cold. What’s the one dish you’d do anything to taste just...

Brought to you by Penguin. Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers. __________ Hat, ribbon, bird rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any...

The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller 'I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami' – Haruki Murakami 'The most exciting Japanese novelist at work today' – The Times A heart-stopping story of teenage girls on the brink in 1990s Tokyo from the...

Manabu Yukawa, the physicist known as "Detective Galileo," has traveled to Hariguara, a once-popular summer resort town that has fallen on hard times. He is there to speak at a conference on a planned underwater mining operation, which has sharply divided the town. One faction is against the...

Brought to you by Penguin. A thrilling crime classic, from the bestselling author of Tokyo Express Tokyo, 1960. As the first rays of morning light hit the rails at Kamata Station, a man’s body is found on the tracks. With only two leads – a distinctive accent and a single word, ‘kameda’...

From Conan Doyle and Rudyard Kipling to Satyajit Ray and R. K. Narayan, this text is a collection of spine-chilling tales of the supernatural from India...

Brought to you by Penguin. While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly spoken government...

Bloomsbury presents In The Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami read by Kenichiro Thomson A rollercoaster ride from the cult master of the psycho-thriller 'A blistering portrait of contemporary Japan, its nihilism and decadence wrapped up within one of the most savage thrillers since The Silence of the...

Brought to you by Penguin. A biting psychological thriller from the bestselling author of Tokyo Express, now available in English for the first time Onizuka Kumako is a fierce woman: tall, beautiful, and not afraid to speak her mind. In Tokyo bars, she seduces customers and commits petty crime...

The Woman in the Dunes, by celebrated writer and thinker Kobo Abe, combines the essence of myth, suspense and the existential novel. After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit...

Brought to you by Penguin. THEIR MISSION IS MURDER. HIS IS REVENGE. A propulsive new thriller from the bestselling author of BULLET TRAIN. Suzuki is just an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. When he discovers the criminal gang responsible he leaves behind his life as a maths teacher and...

A decade ago, Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga went to collect the ashes of his recently deceased mother. Years before, she ran away from her husband and son without explanation or any further contact, leaving her estranged son with many unanswered questions. Now in Tokyo, Michiko Oshitani is found dead many miles from home. Strangled to death, left in the bare apartment rented under a false name by a man who has disappeared without a trace. Oshitani lived far away in Sendai, with no known connection to Tokyo—and neither her family nor friends have any idea why she would have gone there.

During the National High School Cultural Festival ceremony, Yoshiyuki Shimizu - the current Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and a literary giant - was fatally stabbed by a man who rushed out from backstage. The arrested suspect, 37-year-old Akatsuki Nagase, began publishing his memoirs in a weekly magazine following his arrest.

Kabuto is a highly skilled assassin eager to escape his dangerous profession and the hold his handler, the sinister Doctor, has over him. The Doctor, a real physician who hands over Kabuto’s targets as “prescriptions” in his regular appointments with him, doesn’t want to lose Kabuto as a profitable asset, but he agrees to let him pay his way out of his employment with a few last jobs. Only the most lucrative jobs involve taking out other professional assassins, and Kabuto’s final assignment puts him and his family—who have no idea about his double life—in danger.

A class president among class presidents, a bespectacled model student who soars to the top of honors lists without fail, Tsubasa Hanekawa also happens to be a decent human being. True, she does have a habit of making single-minded assumptions, but they come from a good place and turn out to be...

From the National Book Award winning author, an extraordinary, ground-breaking, epic multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation. In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-cheol was a running prodigy and a contender for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. But he...

Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case that terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines the circumstances of this watershed episode in modern Japanese history and brings into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes and the villains. As the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are brought to light, the stakes rise, and some of the professionals we have watched try to fight their way through this crisis will lose everything—some even their lives.