Under the Midnight Sun--a Japanese mystery reviewed

Under the Midnight Sun
by Keigo Higashino
Translated by Alexander O. Smith with Joseph Reeder
Minotaur, November 2016

A pawnbroker is killed in Osaka, Japan. Experienced police detective Sasagaki leads the
investigation, which peters out when a likely suspect dies.

The scene shifts to a group of middle school students which includes the victim’s son, Ryo Kirihara, and the daughter of one the pawn shop customers. There are a series of apparently unconnected incidents as the group moves on into high school. Computer crime in particular is a recurrent theme, with Ryo involved in a plot to make and sell counterfeit Mario Brothers games.

For long periods, the novel will focus on a new character or group and new crimes that involve them. Computer hacking and sale of industrial secrets affect some. Others find love affairs foiled. Characters marry and divorce. The Japanese economybooms and declines. Some characters have secure positions as heirs to family owned companies or comfortable positions as salarymen in corporate Japan. Others live on the edge of the economy as temporary office workers or running small businesses out of converted apartments.

Through it all, Yuhiko Nishimoto Karasawa moves as a mysteriously glamorous young
woman with an uncanny ability to make money. The reader soon notes that persons who are
obstacles to her plans mysteriously come to grief, yet she never seems to be directly
involved.

Almost twenty years after the original murder, detective Sasagaki is retired, but still intent on the case. He returns to the scene and re-interrogates those involved. People, including the dead man’s widow, are willing to be more open with him since the statute of limitations has expired. This element is obviously quite different from American mysteries, in which there is no statute of limitations on homicide. The Japanese law has been altered recently as well. Eventually, Sasagaki learns two facts that enable him to solve the case, and he moves to assist in an arrest, with evidence that the suspect has committed other crimes that can be punished.

The leisurely pace of this novel and the large number of characters set it apart from most western mysteries. Actual detection or police procedure takes place on only a few pages. One might almost regard it as a novel with mystery elements. However, the tension builds as more people die and more lives are affected. The author portrays various levels of Japanese society, from the comfortably well off who send their children to exclusive private schools to single mothers barely making the rent of tiny apartments. Higashino, a native of Osaka, describes the regional differences between his hometown, in the warmer south of Japan, and Toyko: cuisine, accents, levels of prosperity, and climate, making it clear that Japan is not as homogeneous as westerners may assume.

Keigo Higashino is an award-winning writer who has served as president of the Mystery
Writers of Japan. An English translation of his _The Devotion of Suspect X_ was nominated
for a 2013 Edgar Award. In addition to dozens of novels, he has published collections of
short stories and essays. Several works have been adapted as films and television dramas,
including one film, _The Secret_, in French.

The Letter Writer--a detective story reviewed

The Letter Writer
Dan Fesperman

Knopf, April 2016 (hardcover), Vintage Crime/Black Lizard,
March 2017 (paperback)

Woodrow Cain is a newly hired detective sergeant in the NYPD. The year is 1942 and New
York is rife with rumors of sabotage and espionage among the immigrant communities.

Cain is newly arrived from a small town in N. Carolina where he had served as a senior
detective. His job plunges him into conflict between the entrenched corruption of the force,
the new Police Commissioner’s determination to clean up, his wealthy father-in-law’s
connections and his need to care for his daughter, since he is separated from his alcoholic
wife.

Cain’s first case is a floater, a dead German who had been tortured with cigarettes before
being killed and dumped in the Hudson. Investigation of the man’s connections leads to a
strange character, an elderly man who makes his living as a translator of letters and other
documents, and in the process gathers much information about the immigrant
neighborhoods, Danzinger is a man with a murky past. Cain and Danzinger must learn to
trust one another as secrets from their respective pasts threaten each of them and impede the
investigation.

Alternating between Cain’s point of view and Danzinger’s, the case expands as more
victims die and others disappear. Nazi sympathizers may be at work, and members of the
large Italian immigrant community in New York are suspect as well. Meanwhile, some of
the nation’s largest financial firms may be implicated in money changing schemes that
benefited the Nazi regime.

The events of The Letter Writer are based on actual persons and institutions of the time,
including mobsters Lucky Luciano and Albert Anastasia (Murder, Inc.), D.A. Frank Hogan
and Navy Lieutenant Commander Charles Haffenden. The author has done an impressive
job of research and of portraying the different neighborhoods and economic strata of the
city. Enjoyable as both history and mystery.

Two small quibbles: no one in a Jewish neighborhood would think that a man carrying a bag
is on his way to synagogue. Nor would a man from a small southern town be surprised that
a woman he dates is not wearing makeup. That just wasn’t routine outside of high society
and show business in 1942.