The Tattoo Murder

by Takagi, Akimitsu, Boehm, Deborah | Japan
Published 06/10/2022 by PUSHKIN PRESS (Pushkin Vertigo) in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 384 pages
129 x 196 x 33mm | 338g

Selected by Mike Ward from Badlands Records as one of his favourite Japanese novels of all time. 

Mike says, 'A classic example of a post war Japanese crime/mystery novel, there are a lot of crime  and mystery novels being translated these days, most are good but this illustrates some different parts of Japanese society.

Can you solve the mystery of the tattoo murder? Tokyo, 1947. At the first post-war meeting of the Edo Tattoo Society, Kinue Nomura reveals her full-body snake tattoo to rapturous applause. Days later she is gone. A dismembered corpse is discovered in the locked bathroom of her home, but her much-coveted body art is nowhere to be found.

Kinue's horrified lover joins forces with the boy detective Kyosuke Kamizu to try to get to the bottom of the macabre crime, but similar deaths soon follow. Is someone being driven to murder by their lust for tattooed skin, and can they be stopped?Set in a seedy Tokyo of bomb sites, dive bars and Yakuza gangs, The Tattoo Murder is one of Japan's most ingenious and legendary whodunits.