Abstract

*Winner! 75th Mystery Writers of Japan Award
*Winner! 22nd Honkaku Mystery Award

Spanning the years 1906 to 1945, leading to modern Japan, the story follows the mysterious case surrounding the Oomari Family, a wealthy cosmetics and medicine merchant with a store in the Senba area, the most old and traditional business district in the Osaka area at the time.

In 1906, Sentaro Oomari, the son destined to take over the Oomari business mysteriously disappears after visiting the Panoram Rotanda. The business, Omari Cosmetics and Medicine is passed on to a daughter Kiyoe, who married Shigezo, one of the clerks working in the store, and four children, sons Taichro and Shigehiko, and daughters Tsukiko and Fumiko are born. Entering the 1940s, the sons are drafted as soldiers fighting in WWII and the Oomari house, unable to continue the business in war times, has become considerably smaller with only the family and a few servants. One night, the father, Shigezo is found dead hanging from a rope in is room, and a series of gruesome deaths follow, killing off the Oomari family one by one. Police, doctors called in to inspect the bodies, a strange detective who suddenly turns up on the doorstep, are all unable to reach the truth, meanwhile a huge air raid attacks Osaka.

A new Japanese masterpiece in the Honkaku Mystery era.

Author’s Information

Born 1958 in Osaka, graduate of Doshisha University. Shortlisted for the 2nd Fantasy Novel New Writers Award in 1986. Winner of the 1st Tetsuya Ayukawa Mystery Award with “Satsujin Kigeki no 13 nin (Thirteen in a Murder Comedy)” which was his first published title. Since then has written many titles including “Murder in the Red Chamber” which was published in English. Regarded as one of the representative writers of the new traditionalist movement in Japanese mystery writing.