Forty-five-year-old Inspector Imanishi Eitaro is a Haiku poet, gardener, and the most dogged and worn-out homicide detective of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Agency.
Since he had been assigned to the Kamata Railroad Yard Murder case - where an unidentified dead body had been found under a train - he had come home late every night.
The unidentified dead man had been strangled, his face viciously battered to an unrecognizable pulp and his gray hair matted with blood. The victim had been wearing a cheap suit, shirt and underwear and looked like a poor labourer.
Thus a tantalizing yet simplistic thriller unfolds.
Inspector Imanishi Investigates (1961) is Seicho Matsumoto's police procedural debut first published under the Japanese title Suna no Utsuwa (Vessel of Sand).
The New York Times Book Review praised Seicho Matsumoto as a master crime writer amongst the likes of P D James and Georges Simenon. His thrillers teach Japanese strategy and offers readers an intriguing insight into the mores and habits of Japanese society (San Francisco Chronicle).
Brief byte on the author: Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1992) was a prolific and highest-earning Japanese crime fiction writer of his day. He debuted as a writer after reaching the age of forty with the historically based Saigo-satsu (1950) and Aru Kokura Nikki Den (1952). He then went on to establish his unique style of detective fiction with the works Me no kabe (1957) and Ten to sen (1958). Well-known non-fiction works include Black Fog over Japan (1961) and the Unearthing the Showa Period series (1964-1971). Eight of his novels have been adapted to films - Castle of Sand (1974) is considered one of the masterpieces of Japanese cinema. He is the winner of the Akutagawa Literary Prize in 1952, the Kikuchi Kan Prize in 1970 and the Japanese Mystery Writers' Prize in 1957.
Inspector Imanishi Investigates is translated from the Japanese into the English by Beth Cary.
Rating: 5/5
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