Abstract

This is an authentic mystery work by the author who won the Naoki Sanjugo Award, the most famous literature prize in Japan. By the dramatic development interwoven with masterfully hidden foreshadowing as well as the splendid framework which exceeds the reader's imagination, the book was crowned as the winner of the 7th Honkaku Mystery Award. As already mentioned, this work not only has excellent taste as a mystery, above all, it also has a fantastic flavor as a juvenile novel.

After losing his mother to an illness, Ousuke, an 11-year-old boy, lives with his father, Yoichiro. Now, more than anything else, he wishes for a modest and quiet life with his father. However, the mother of Ousuke’s childhood friend, whose family was close to Ousuke’s family, killed herself by jumping off the roof of the hospital where Yoichiro worked. After that incident, the childhood friend also got into a traffic accident, and Yoichiro’s behavior gradually became strange.

Author’s Information

Born 1975 in Tokyo. His novel, Se no Me (Eyes behind my back) was awarded the 5th Horror Suspense Award’s Special Award in 2004. He leaped into fame as a novelist when his second novel, Himawari no Sakanai Natsu (A summer when the sunflowers do not bloom), released in 2005, was nominated as a candidate for the 6th Honkaku Mystery Award, and his short novel, ‘Nagareboshi no Tsukurikata (How to Make a Shooting Star)’ was nominated as a candidate for the 59th Mystery Writers of Japan Award. His elaborate style is characterized by rich stories whose fictional universe is well woven with foreshadowing and traps. He is the winner of the 7th Honkaku Mystery Award for Shadou (Who’s the Shadow?) in 2007, 62nd Mystery Writers of Japan Award (novel and short story series category) for Karasu no Oyayubi (By rule of crow’s thumb) in 2009, 12th Haruhiko Oyabu Award with Ryujin no Ame (Rain of the Dragon God) and 23rd Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for Kobai no Hana (The flower of intermediary light) in 2010 and the 144th Naoki Award for Tsuki to Kani (Moon and crab) in 2011. His other novels include Baku no Ori (Cell of the tapir).