A DEATH IN TOKYO

The fatal stabbing of a prominent businessman in the heart of Tokyo unleashes a fury of scandals.

No sooner has Takeaki Aoyagi, head of production at Kaneseki Metals, collapsed on the Nihonbashi Bridge than police spot a possible suspect fleeing the scene. Struck by a car before they can catch him, Fuyuki Yashima turns out to be carrying Aoyagi’s wallet; the dead man’s briefcase is found nearby. Yashima can say nothing in his own defense because he’s in a coma. So Inspector Kyoichiro Kaga and his cousin, Detective Shuhei Matsumiya, of the Tokyo Metropolitan homicide squad, have to be satisfied with questioning Yashima’s live-in lover, Kaori Nakahara, who’s three months pregnant. Yashima, she tells them, had been unemployed since losing his job with Kaneseki Metals under circumstances that turn out to implicate Aoyagi in a shameful coverup and give Yashima a perfect motive for his murder. Though Yashima’s death gives them an excuse to close the case, Kaga and Matsumiya persist in digging deeper and find evidence that Aoyagi had been making the circuit of the Seven Lucky Gods, leaving a flock of origami cranes at the Kasama Inari Shrine. What was his motive for his pilgrimage, and what other foul secrets lie beneath it? Though the alternative explanations for Aoyagi’s murder, unfolding in strict succession, have little to do with one another, Higashino unfolds them with the force of a powerful indictment against the corruption that seems to pervade his great city.

The dark side—make that sides—of Tokyo, masterfully revealed.