The Final Curtain

July 1, 2023

A woman is found strangled to death in a Tokyo apartment rented under a false name by a man now vanished. Is there a connection to another unaccountable death, the burning of a homeless man? And can Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga, whose recently deceased mother ran away 10 years ago, shed any light on the case? From Edgar/CWA Dagger finalist Higashino; with a 35,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from October 9, 2023
Tokyo police detective Kyoichiro Kaga discovers an unsettling personal connection to a tricky murder case in the brilliantly twisty fourth entry in Higashino’s series (after 2022’s A Death in Tokyo). Kaga’s cousin, Shuhei Matsumiya, a detective with a separate division of the Tokyo police, suspects that two strangulation murders may be linked, despite no evidence of a connection between the victims. In the first, an unidentified homeless man was believed to have perished in a fire until an autopsy revealed smoke-free lungs and strangulation marks on his neck. A few weeks later, cleaning contractor Michiko Oshitani’s decomposing remains are discovered in a spartan Tokyo apartment hundreds of miles from her home with apparent strangulation marks around her neck. Though the crimes are outside Kaga’s jurisdiction, Matsumiya seeks his cousin’s advice. Soon afterward, Matsumiya’s colleagues discover a calendar in the apartment where Oshitani died with phrases that hearken back to the death of Kaga’s mother more than a decade ago. She’d left Kaga’s father long before that to pursue another man, and among her effects was a note with the same phrases as the calendar, and in the same handwriting. Higashino metes out the plot’s surprises slowly, prioritizing Kaga’s emotional response to the investigation. This poignant fair-play whodunit is sure to thrill fans of golden age detective fiction.

October 15, 2023
Tokyo's detective cousins Kaga and Matsumiya reunite for a case with life-changing personal consequences. A woman's decomposing body has been found in an apartment closet, and the apartment's renter is missing. Kaga, usually assigned to the famed Nihonbashi district, is brought on to the TMPD Homicide Division in the hopes that his solve rate will net results. But when the apartment's renter doesn't appear on any official records, things become increasingly mysterious. Kaga suspects that the crime is connected to a homeless man recently burned in his nearby tent. Then, they discover that the dead woman was in Tokyo to visit famed stage actress Hiromi Asai. Asai's secrecy about her past raises flags for the detectives, who suspect that it holds the case's answers. The duo is in for a real surprise when the trail of bodies and hidden identities leads to revelations about Kaga's estranged mother. Gentle pacing and a satisfying mix of deduction and boots-on-the-ground detection soften this mystery's grisly murder scenarios and weighty emotional consequences. For fans of Higashino's previous book, A Death in Tokyo (2022).

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November 1, 2023
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.

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