Description

Can you solve the mystery of the tattoo murder?
Tokyo, 1947. At the first post-war meeting of the Edo Tattoo Society, Kinue Nomura reveals her full-body snake tattoo to rapturous applause. Days later she is gone. A dismembered corpse is discovered in the locked bathroom of her home, but her much-coveted body art is nowhere to be found.
Kinue’s horrified lover joins forces with the boy detective Kyosuke Kamizu to try to get to the bottom of the macabre crime, but similar deaths soon follow. Is someone being driven to murder by their lust for tattooed skin, and can they be stopped?

Set in a seedy Tokyo of bomb sites, dive bars and Yakuza gangs, The Tattoo Murder is one of Japan’s most ingenious and legendary whodunits.

Publisher Review

'Intricate, fantastic and utterly absorbing. More please . . . Calculated to outdo John Dickson Carr in both ghoulishness and ingenuity' - Kirkus Reviews 'A delightful, different book, not only because of its unusual setting and premise, but because Takagi is a powerful plotter and constructor of fascinating, complex characters' - The A.V. Club 'Like voyeurs, we follow Takagi down the charred streets of bombed-out Tokyo to scenes of fastidiously executed decadence' - The New York Times 'It took 50 years for this novel to reach our shores but it feels thoroughly modern.' - Parade Magazine 'Clever, kinky, highly entertaining . . . I want more.' - Washington Post Book World