An ultra-rare foray into the crime section of the library for me, borrowed because I had filled a reservation for it and the length convinced me it was worth a try.

Journalist Moichi Akitani becomes fixated on the case of Kumako Onizuka, a former Tokyo escort suspected to have murdered her older husband, Fukutarō Shirakawa, to claim his 3-million-yen life insurance policy. When Shirakawa’s car drove straight into the water at a port, he was trapped and died, while Onizuka survived. Under questioning, she swore that her husband was driving, whereas the consensus seems to be that she was lying and drove him off the pier – but had planted a spanner (wrench) in the car so that she could break the windscreen and escape. With his newspaper articles, Akitani perhaps unwittingly helps to perpetuate sexist assumptions about Onizuka and condition readers to expect a conviction.

Over four years and several defence lawyers, the case gets drawn out so much that the initial furore dies down. But for Akitani, the fascination remains. There are two details that people get hung up on: the spanner, and Shirakawa’s right shoe, which was found in the car, quite beaten up. As public opinion begins to turn, Akitani is paralysed by the realization that if Onizuka goes free, she might have her gangster acquaintances come after him.

Although I found this somewhat dull until the revelations of the final chapter and the twist ending, it’s an interesting study of obsession, preconceptions and the femme fatale stereotype. Written in the 1980s, it has an atmosphere that hearkens back to the era of classic crime by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. All in all, a pleasant entertainment that could easily be polished off in an afternoon.

Suspicion by Seichō Matsumoto (1982; 2025)

[Translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood]

(Public library)

[98 pages]