Harini Nagendra brings the vibrancy of 1920s India to life in the “Bangalore Detectives Club” series, tightly-plotted mysteries interweaving themes of colonialism, women’s empowerment and the environment. In the latest, Into the Leopard’s Den, her fearless sleuth Kaveri Murthy—now pregnant with her first child—travels to the verdant forests and sprawling coffee plantations of Coorg to investigate a murder.
Crime
At a demolition site in modern-day Osaka, workers unearth an old air raid shelter, sealed for decades. Inside, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr, The Tragedy of the Funatomi by Yu Aoi, and other classic mystery novels are wrapped in a faded cloth, embroidered with “House of Omari” and the merchant’s long-forgotten temari-ball logo. Once the glamorous face of the cosmetics industry, the Omari family saw their fortunes decline with the onset of the second world war—and then the murders begin.
A family has gathered in a mansion to discuss the inheritance of a wealthy grandfather’s estate. It is a familiar mystery setup, and one that risks cliché, but Yasuhiko Nishizawa takes it into exciting new territory in The Man Who Died Seven Times. Nearly the whole story occurs within a single repeating day, much like the time-looping premise of the classic film Groundhog Day. Faced with his grandfather’s murder, the protagonist must sort out the nature of the crime (and try to prevent it) by altering the course of that day’s events.
In the transition from spring to summer, tensions at Towa Textile are heating up. Factory workers—demanding higher wages, severance pay and other benefits—prepare for a prolonged struggle against management. With the senior executive director abroad at a textile convention and union leaders at a meeting, company director Gosuke Nishinohata is found dead by the train tracks near Kuki Station.
In the corner of a busy cafe in Tokyo, three men meet over coffee. But the trio of Goto, Takumi, and Sasaki are not who they seem—they are rehearsing carefully scripted roles in a property scam. With real estate values soaring in the city, schemes to make a quick profit are on the rise.
Horace Yang, a downtrodden office worker haunted by failure, betrayal, and brutal imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution, has finally found a way to settle the score. Obsessed with revenge, he presses on to a confrontation that can only end in death.
The island of Sri Lanka resembles a teardrop, also the title of Sue Amos’s latest novel, set in 1953 when the country was still called Ceylon. Teardrop is a murder mystery that weaves in both folklore and the beauty of the island.
Paul Bevan is the one of the most prominent scholars of early 20th-century Shanghai and it’s thanks to him that English language readers have learned of the contributions of Chinese illustrators, writers, publishers and other artists in late-Qing and Republican-era Shanghai. A few years ago, he translated a novel titled The Adventures of Ma Suzhen: An Heroic Woman Takes Revenge in Shanghai. This novel was originally written in the early 1920s, but takes place several decades before that.
Almost a hundred years ago, Agatha Christie published an Hercule Poirot mystery, Death in the Air, which takes place on a flight from Paris to London. It may not be her most famous, but debut author Ram Murali has recycled the title for his whodunnit set mainly in the foothills of the Himalayas near Rishikesh—where the Beatles studied meditation—but also in small parts in London, Paris, and Bermuda.
One winter day, Reiko asks her friend Rika to pick up some butter on her way over for dinner. But due to a product shortage, this simple favor turns into a trip to several grocery stores and results only in the purchase of a tub of margarine, setting the stage for a story where just one ingredient can change everything.
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