A Quiet Place - Seicho Matsumoto

A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto, translated by Louise Heal Kawai / ISBN 9781908524638 / 235-page paperback from Bitter Lemon Press

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While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wife who was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetings ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood?

When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife's death he discovers the villa Tachibana near by, a house known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life...

'Pushed the art of the detective story in Japan to new dimensions, introducing the 'social detective story' describing police procedurals and depicting Japanese society with unprecedented realism.' - Independent

'A master crime writer...Seicho Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society.' -The New York Times Book Review