"A master crime writer...Seichō Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society."--The New York Times. A beautifully written mystery novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation.Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by an intermediary. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Teiko travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance.
She discovers he had been a police officer in Tokyo after the war, keeping watch over pan pan girls, Japanese prostitutes catering to GIs. Some of these women have created a new life in Kanazawa and may have taken extreme measures to hide their past.
"Do you aspire to be a connoisseur of the best international crime fiction? If so, Seicho Matsumoto's Point Zero should be on your bedside table. Become acquainted with a crime master." Financial Times Industry Reviews
Praise for Point Zero: "We travel on a slow-paced and absorbing journey through a Japan that fascinates but no longer exists (any more than 1958 Britain any longer exists)...to a very Japanese conclusion." CrimeTime "Do you aspire to be a connoisseur of the best international crime fiction? If so, Seicho Matsumoto's Point Zero should be on your bedside table. Become acquainted with a crime master." Financial Times "Matsumoto's love for the rugged, wintry Japanese landscape is evident in his descriptions, which are verbal equivalents of traditional Japanese art." NY Journal of Books "Along with an intriguing mystery, Matsumoto gives an unobtrusive but fascinating lesson in the history and culture of the period between the Japan we know today and its immediate past." Morning StarPraise for Matsumoto: "A master crime writer...Seicho Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society."--The New York Times Book Review "He writes in the classic tradition of Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret of Paris; Nicholas Freeling's Inspector Van der Valk in Amsterdam; Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Superintendent Beck in Stockholm; Magdalen Nabb's Marshal Guarnaccia in Florence, and P. D. James's Chief Inspector Dalgliesh in England."--New York TimesPraise for A Quiet Place by Matsumoto: "A surprising and immensely satisfying resolution that flows naturally from the book's complex characterizations. Readers will agree that Matsumoto deserves his reputation as Japan's Georges Simenon." --STARRED review Publishers Weekly "There's an element of the exquisite poetic Haiku form in the book, in the details that turn the story in new directions, and the tiniest mistakes that lead to tragic and unforeseen outcomes."--Spectator
