The lady killer

Set in 1963, this clever crime thriller from Togawa (The Master Key) begins with the suicide of 19-year-old Keiko Obana, a key-punch operator who falls to her death from an upper story of her Tokyo office building six months after a one-night stand with a stranger with a memorable singing voice whom she met at a nightclub. Keiko's older sister, Tsuneko, who raised her after their parents were killed by the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, didn't know about that encounter and is stunned to learn that her sibling was pregnant. The investigating inspector believes that stress over the pregnancy led to Keiko's suicide. The narrative then shifts to an unnamed woman's search for the singing stranger, who's identified as Ichiro Honda. Togawa changes gears again, to present events from Honda's perspective, as a series of women he's had flings with-conquests documented in what he terms his Huntsman's Log-are murdered. Togawa maintains uncertainty about who's responsible for the killings until closing with the logical and fairly clued reveal. Puzzle mystery fans will be well satisfied. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A second novel proving the author's well-received debut (The Master Key) to be no fluke. Ichiro Honda is a good-looking computer expert who works in Tokyo, lives in a respectable hotel, and visits his wife, in Osaka with her wealthy father, only on weekends. Behind this unexceptional facade, his life is dedicated to the conquest of a never-ending succession of young women; a secret apartment facilitates his many phony identities, a diary records each seduction. One of his victims is Keiko Obana, a dreamy key-punch operator who commits suicide when pregnancy results from her one night with Honda, a fact the police disclose only to her sister Tsuneko. Over the next months, three of Honda's bedmates are murdered. He's eventually convicted of two of the killings. The evidence against him--in part, blood and semen traces, lack of alibis and his diary--seems solid as granite, but elderly Kentaro Hatanaka, his appeal lawyer, is a man of sensitivity, tenacity and imagination. He needs all of those qualities to get to the surprise spider in this tightly woven web. Full of subtly menacing tensions and sharp psychological insights, told in lean, sparsely ornamented style. This one is a must for the discerning reader. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.