Zero Focus

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.

Praise for Matsumoto: "A master crime writer...Seichō Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society."--The New York Times Book Review "He writes in the classic tradition of Georges Simenon's Inspector Maigret of Paris; Nicholas Freeling's Inspector Van der Valk in Amsterdam; Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo's Superintendent Beck in Stockholm; Magdalen Nabb's Marshal Guarnaccia in Florence, and P. D. James's Chief Inspector Dalgliesh in England."--New York TimesPraise for A Quiet Place by Matsumoto: "A surprising and immensely satisfying resolution that flows naturally from the book's complex characterizations. Readers will agree that Matsumoto deserves his reputation as Japan's Georges Simenon." --STARRED review Publishers Weekly "There's an element of the exquisite poetic Haiku form in the book, in the details that turn the story in new directions, and the tiniest mistakes that lead to tragic and unforeseen outcomes."--Spectator

Seichō Matsumoto was Japan's most successful thriller writer. His first detective novel, "Points and Lines", sold over a million copies in Japan. "Vessel of Sand", published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates in 1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit. Bitter Lemon Press published his novel "A Quiet Place to great acclaim.