A Quiet Place by Seicho Matsumoto is a Japanese psychological thriller that dissects Japanese society (Available in English translation August 16, 2016). Originally published in Japanese in 1975 and now being released in a new English translation, Seicho Matsumoto’s suspense novel follows the life of Tsuneo Asai, a 42-year-old middle-management civil servant who lives in…
One can’t really describe the Japanese mystery writer Seichō Matsumoto by comparing him to his English language equivalent because, in all the ways that matter, he has no equivalent. (The writer Wolcott Wheeler once described him as “one part Raymond Chandler, one part John Steinbeck, and one part Gore Vidal”—which should give some sense of…
It is commonly said that truth is stranger than fiction, and while I won’t go quite that far, I have to admit that the truth can be quite strange at times. Criminals can be extremely creative, with the most creative often being the most successful. As G.K. Chesterton wrote in his Father Brown story “The…
