My second Seichō Matsumoto book. The first was “Tokyo Express” which was a shorter and more murder mystery than “Inspector Imanishi Investigates”, and I enjoyed a lot. The solution to the mystery was very neat too.
“Inspector Imanishi Investigates” too is great, but it’s a different sort of mystery. I was reminded of the malayalam movie “Rekhachitram” which I saw some months ago and loved very much (didn’t blog about it). Both are about the journey to solve the crime – starting with the bare minimum information on the victim, and slowly building up a picture by following the clues. In “Inspector Imanishi Investigates” there are a lot of dead ends, wandering about all over Japan, false clues, and an Inspector who very patiently and methodically is trying to figure out what happened. And all of this is set in 1960s Japan. Unlike a lot of other Japanese murder mysteries I’ve read recently, this one is less about figuring out how an ingenious crime was committed (like a locked room mystery) but is like a slow burn journey solving the mystery (but it’s also not gloomy or grim like a lot of such stories are).
Good read!