Japanese Detective Fiction

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. 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’...

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.

Brought to you by Penguin. In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Stood in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes...

Brought to you by Penguin. Shogun meets Sherlock Holmes! Over 24 million copies have been sold of this beloved samurai adventure It has been half a year since Akiyama Daijiro became a samurai; half a year since he left his father Kohei – once the most skilled swordsman in the land – to set...

"Murder mystery fans and cat lovers get ready for an iconic new series" Janice Hallet "Think Agatha Chrisite with claws" A.J. Finn "You can absolutely see why Jiro Akagawa is such a staple of Japanese crime fiction" Kristen Perrin Detective Yoshitaro Katayama is afraid of many things: heights...

A Japanese The Thursday Murder Club, taking healing fiction for a mystery-filled spin with this bestseller that has sold more than 200,000 copies in Japan. He’s not your average Grandpa. As a lover of classic crime stories, it’s no surprise that schoolteacher Kaede encounters everyday...

An artfully twisty psychological mystery from Seichō Matsumoto, hailed as “Japan’s Agatha Christie” (The Sunday Times), exploring the corrosive power of jealousy, guilt, and doubt While on an important business trip, Tsuneo Asai receives word that his wife, Eiko, has died suddenly of a...

Part romance, part detective story, Sputnik Sweetheart tells the story of a tangled triangle of uniquely unrequited love. Now with a new introduction from the author. K is madly in love with his best friend, Sumire, but her devotion to a writerly life precludes her from any personal commitments...

From “Japan's Agatha Christie” (The Sunday Times): A secluded bay. An apparent lovers’ suicide. And a pair of detectives with a nagging suspicion that the pieces don’t add up. Can you solve one of the most astonishing literary puzzles ever written? “An irresistible Hitchcockian gem: a...

Bakemono, literally “altered thing,” which translates as “monster.” Monogatari, literally “thing narrated,” which translates as “tale.” Combined into a neologism by he of the reversible nom de plume, they yield BAKEMONOGATARI, the monster tale that kicked off a series whose anime...

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...

We all hold lost recipes in our hearts. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps find them . . . Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food detectives,”...

A taut psychological thriller about the hidden demons that guide our convictions, our biases, and our deepest desires, available in English for the first time from “Japan’s Agatha Christie.” (The Sunday Times) In the middle of the night, a car drives off a pier. An elderly man drowns, but...

Leilani Santiago is back in her birthplace, the Hawaiian island of Kaua’i, to help keep afloat the family business, a shave ice shack. When she goes to work one morning, she stumbles across a dead body, a young pro surfer who was being coached by her estranged father. As her father soon becomes the no. 1 murder suspect, Leilani must find the real killer and somehow safeguard her ill mother, little sisters, and grandmother while also preserving a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend in Seattle.

It's the middle of the pandemic and Hawaii has been virtually closed to tourists.

So when Leilani Santiago and her young sisters save a mysterious woman wearing an unusual lei fro….

Within the premises of the Japanese Consulate in London a perfidious assasination came to pass. In order to avoid diplomatic affairs and to quickly solve this murder the responsible intelligence officer turns to Sherlock Holmes.