So this is a crime thriller written by a Japanese writer in the 1960s. I guess I didn’t know that existed, which is my fault and my mistake. I liked this novel and felt that it did some masterful work at giving us the primary suspect with a pretty close camera behind his shoulder throughout the whole thing, and it was never clear until the very end whether or not he was guilty.
The novel is about a young man named Ichiro, who is married, has a good career, readily sleeps with any woman he can get with, and according to the logic of the novel might also be a serial killer. Because a number of his conquests keep ending up dead. We start with a suicide, the news of which he finds curious, but then as the novel progresses and more of his former lovers die, he’s not clear about what’s going on.
The real star of the novel is the structure that Masako Towada has graced us with. While we get a rundown of the various crimes and the movements of Ichiro throughout, the bulk of the mystery happens in the defense’s investigation into the crimes. It’s 1962 and so while DNA is not on the menu, the novel does go through some very interesting mid-century forensic techniques involving blood type, evidence collection, alibis, and other types of investigative methods in order to paint us an initially confusing if ultimately rewarding picture of the crimes.
What this book most reminds me of is the Maj Slowall/ Per Wahloo Martin Beck mysteries in their kind of no-nonsense investigation of crimes amid changing social mores.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Lady-Killer-Pushkin-Vertigo/dp/1782273646/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=lady+killer+masako&qid=1554649160&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull)