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A review by crazygoangirl
Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto
mysterious
medium-paced
3.0
Another Japanese police procedural that at times is tediously detailed but with a neat twist! A slim book with a great cover from Penguin Modern Classics.
The book is set in 1957 and begins with two bodies on a rocky beach, a man and a woman in what the police claim is a ‘lovers suicide pact’ - suicide is a very common theme in Japanese crime and I find the casualness of it quite disturbing. Inspector Torigai and Detective Mihara collaborate to solve the conundrum based on their intuitive knowledge of human nature and a painstakingly detailed and repetitive examination of the facts and evidence. There are a fair number of railway and airline timetables involved and once again I’m convinced that a crime such as this one could only have taken place in Japan and by a Japanese perpetrator. The attention to detail by both Japanese criminals and policemen is excruciatingly intricate! Their sensibilities are starkly different from us non-Japanese humans 😃
I was fairly certain of the criminal’s identity but not the modus operandi, and the final twist took me by surprise! On the whole, a short, succinct and fairly enjoyable mystery in the Japanese vein! Worth a read.
The book is set in 1957 and begins with two bodies on a rocky beach, a man and a woman in what the police claim is a ‘lovers suicide pact’ - suicide is a very common theme in Japanese crime and I find the casualness of it quite disturbing. Inspector Torigai and Detective Mihara collaborate to solve the conundrum based on their intuitive knowledge of human nature and a painstakingly detailed and repetitive examination of the facts and evidence. There are a fair number of railway and airline timetables involved and once again I’m convinced that a crime such as this one could only have taken place in Japan and by a Japanese perpetrator. The attention to detail by both Japanese criminals and policemen is excruciatingly intricate! Their sensibilities are starkly different from us non-Japanese humans 😃
I was fairly certain of the criminal’s identity but not the modus operandi, and the final twist took me by surprise! On the whole, a short, succinct and fairly enjoyable mystery in the Japanese vein! Worth a read.