The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

A Mystery Novel by Soji Shimada

Subgenres:

Locked-Room Mystery,
Japanese Crime,
Horror Mystery

Published 1981

Length 321 pages

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This book is for you if you're into...

Locked room puzzles with maps, charts, and visual clues
Macabre mysteries blending logic, stagecraft, and dark humor
Japanese crime fiction with eerie, gory twists

Publisher Description

One of The Guardian's "Top 10 Locked Room Mysteries" An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this "bloody and bizarre" Japanese crime novel with a twist hailed as "one of the most original" (Daily Mail).. Astrologer, fortune teller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years—in just one week.

With the help of his freelance illustrator friend, Kiyoshi sets out to answer the questions that have haunted the country ever since: Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, 'the perfect woman'?

With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion—pieced together like a great stage tragedy—challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain falls.

This quintessential Japanese "logic mystery"—eerie, gory, and intriguing—combines the puzzle-solving of Golden Age Western detective fiction with elements of shocking horror and dark humor.

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