Russell James has been named “the Godfather of Noir” by Ian Rankin. Russell writes crime novels - about criminals and victims, not the cozy procedural or whodunnit. He is the editor of Great British Fictional Detectives.
A different world.
In 1958 Tokyo a bright go-ahead young woman agrees to an arranged marriage with an older man. They marry, have an agreeable honeymoon, he goes back to work in a coastal town – and vanishes. She sets out to find him and discover what happened, and it is soon clear that he has not walked out on her. No one at his workplace or in the town has any idea what happened.
Japan in 1958 retains strong memories of and is much affected by the Second World War. It remains a deferential and strikingly courteous country in which direct questions, especially from a woman, are unthinkable. But she, joined by her brother-in-law and a helpful policeman, realize that her new husband is almost certainly dead, and was probably murdered. Conducting an enquiry in this smotheringly polite society seems impossible. But she persists. As do the deaths. We travel with her on a slow-paced and absorbing journey through a Japan that fascinates but no longer exists (any more than 1958 Britain any longer exists) into a tangled and over-long denouement and a very Japanese conclusion.
Translated by Louise Heal Kawai
