THE FINAL CURTAIN

A summons to Tokyo leads Det. Kyoichiro Kaga of the Nihonbashi Precinct to some places that are unnervingly dark and close to home.

When Michiko Oshitani, a cleaning salesperson for Melody Air, is found dead long after she’s been strangled in Mutsuo Koshikawa’s apartment, Tokyo Det. Shuhei Matsumiya and his colleagues would love to talk to Koshikawa. But no one has seen him since the weekend of the murder. The case seems open and shut, but the discovery soon after of the body of a homeless man strangled on the Shinkoiwa riverbank suggests that a single killer may be responsible for both deaths, and the evidence doesn’t support the theory that Koshikawa is the killer. Calling on his cousin Kaga for help, Matsumiya works with him to brainstorm theories and gather evidence, only to end up tossing out one theory after another. A particularly vexing clue is a list of 12 Tokyo bridges linked to specific months of the calendar that Kaga himself has a copy of, though he doesn’t know what it means. There are strong indications that both murders are somehow connected to actress/playwright/director Hiromi Kadokura, Michiko’s classmate in junior high school (when she was Hiromi Asai); to Seizo Naemura, the homeroom teacher the girls shared; and to Kaga’s own troubled family history. Stunned by the fact that he knew both the first victim and the missing suspect, Kaga can’t believe that’s a coincidence. Only the most painstaking detective work will establish the motive behind the murders, rooted in a well-nigh endless series of masquerades by more characters than one.

An intricate, many-layered puzzle created by a killer whose identity is its least surprising feature.