In this modern-day police procedural by Tetsuya Honda, homicide investigators are flummoxed by the discovery of two male corpses wrapped in blue plastic tarpaulins in, and near, a pond in Tokyo¡¯s Katsushika Ward. When similar submerged bodies are found in Saitama, the pressure builds to track down what appears to be a serial killer, and Lt. Reiko Himekawa really has her work cut out for her.
Himekawa has a gift for clearing cases through sharp insights and shrewd deductions, a trait resented by older male colleagues who remain convinced that plodding teamwork is the only way to solve crimes. Her fellow cops are portrayed as sexist, devious, eccentric, self-serving and thoroughly dislikable, to the point of stretching the reader¡¯s credulity.
Another problem concerns the large amount of space devoted to the detective¡¯s private life, which threatens to intrude on the book¡¯s main concern of crime and detection. Adoption by the translator, or editor, of overly colloquial English expressions serves as an unnecessary irritant.
Though this noir tale¡¯s master criminal ¡ª introduced early in the narrative ¡ª stands out as dislikable in an obvious way that Japanese readers in particular might appreciate, Honda¡¯s whodunit wins points for originality. He plays fair by obeying the established tenets of the mystery genre, without resorting to secret passageways, identical twins or a dog that doesn¡¯t bark because it recognizes the perpetrator.
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