Preamble
As I read and write and think a lot about detective and crime fiction, I review on the theme. Sadly, capacity is too limited to cover detective films and TV series too! If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.
Or you can take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: order now!
See also
These lists capture other stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- The Tattoo Thief (Alison Belsham)
- Tattoos in crime and detective narratives: Marking and remarking (ed. Kate Watson and Katharine Cox)
- A story from The Measure of Malice (ed. Martin Edwards), which I really won’t name because it’s a bit of a spoiler
Review
This is the latest in a line of post-war Japanese detective stories published by Pushkin Press that I’ve read over the past few years. I have to say, as a novel, I found it a bit flummoxing at times. The back-cover summary sets out the crime to be solved—the murder of a tattooed woman (Kinue Nomura) and the theft of her tattooed torso—as well as the detectives—her lover (Kenzo Matsushita) and a “boy detective” (Kyosuke Kamizu). Except her lover is more of a one-night stand, and the “boy detective” is a man in his mid-to-late twenties who has returned from service as an army surgeon in WWII, who doesn’t even appear in the story until about 60% of the way through.
I am inclined to blame Pushkin Press for this mis-selling on the back of the book, but it did mean I was a bit puzzled and disappointed for a large chunk of the book. However, this wasn’t a DNF for me because I was interested in the subculture the story explored, at a time when tattooing was technically illegal in Japan, and I had a theory about what had happened (which was correct!), and this is one of the stories that I think could be interesting to study, even if it wasn’t so much fun to read. It almost has an extraordinary sidekick in (Kyosuke Kamizu doesn’t quite work with the police, but it’s close), but it also made me think about a number of other elements of detective fiction as a genre, which is why I’ve included an academic book in the See also section.
If this were adapted for television (which I think might be a good fit as a limited series), I suspect it would highlight the beauty of the tattoos and their clandestine nature, which is hard to do in a text medium, and the back-and-forth between Kinue’s lover and his elder brother, who is the detective responsible for solving the gruesome murder and the two other killings that follow. There are moments of real humour in this text, as well as the interest in its subject matter, but the crime itself (and the detection) are not the most gripping or best paced.
If you like short fiction, take a look at my collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: order now!
Dominique Gracia 
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