'An irresistible Hitchcockian gem: a fiendishly-plotted crime novel told in crisp, elegant prose' Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train 'Matsumoto was Japan's Agatha Christie' Laura Hackett, The Sunday Times 'It was a puzzle with no solution. But he did not lose heart.' In a rocky cove in the bay of Hakata, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Stood in the coast's wind and cold, the police see nothing to investigate: the flush of the couple's cheeks speaks clearly of cyanide, of a lovers' suicide. But in the eyes of two men, Torigai Jutaro, a senior detective, and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime... Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seicho Matsumoto's masterpiece - and as one of the most fiendish puzzles ever written.

Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenuichi Uehara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by an intermediary. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Keito travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance. She discovers that in the past, he had been a police officer in Tokyo, keeping watch over 'pan-pan' girls--Japanese prostitutes catering to GIs during the post-war occupation. Some of these girls have created a new life for themselves in Kanazawa and Kenichi begins to suspect that they may have taken extreme measures to hide their past.

In a police procedural by Japan's foremost master of mystery, Inspector Imanishi Eitaro, a typically Japanese detective fond of gardening and haiku, must follow a killer's trail across the social strata of Japan.