Japanese Fiction Thrillers

Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case which terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines the circumstances of this watershed episode in modern Japanese history and brings into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes and the villains. As the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are brought to light, the stakes rise, and some of the professionals we have watched try to fight their way through this crisis will lose everything—some even their lives.

伊豆見翔人、23歳、無職。強盗やひったくりを繰り返すうちにウッカリ女を刺してしまった。逃げるなか山奥の村に迷い込み、おスマ婆さんに拾われる。村人たちにかまわれながら暮らす日々、その間にもよぎる迷い「いざとなったら」「盗んで」「殺しても」「仕方がない」――「今から諦めちょったら、残りの人生、どぎゃんすっと」。　巧みな人物造形・心理描写、著者の真骨頂ともいえる心理サスペンスの傑作。監督/吉田純子

When Toru Narazaki's girlfriend, Ryoko, disappears, he tries to track her down, despite the warnings of a private detective he's hired to find her. Ryoko's past is shrouded in mystery, but the one concrete clue leads him to a compound in the heart of Tokyo, with a group that seems to be a cult led by a charismatic guru. Narazaki plunges into the secretive world of the cult, ready to expose himself to any of the guru's brainwashing tactics if it means he can learn the truth about Ryoko. But the cult isn't what he expected, and he has no idea of the bubbling violence beneath its surface.

Akira Kido is a divorce attorney whose own marriage is in danger of being destroyed by emotional disconnect. With a midlife crisis looming, Kido's life is upended by the reemergence of a former client, Rié Takemoto. She wants Kido to investigate a dead man - her recently deceased husband, Daisuké. Upon his death she discovered that he’d been living a lie. His name, his past, his entire identity belonged to someone else, a total stranger.

Japan faces Korea in the World Baseball Classic at Dodger Stadium, and curmudgeonly gardener Mas Arai finds himself embroiled in a murder. A Japanese tabloid writer drops dead on the field, and Mas gave the victim his last drink. It turns out there's more at stake than a baseball championship - international diplomacy depends upon uncovering secrets buried decades ago.

LA gardener Mas Arai returns to Hiroshima to bring his best friend’s ashes to a relative on the tiny offshore island of Ino, only to become embroiled in the mysterious death of a teenage boy who was about the same age Mas was when he survived the atomic bomb in 1945. The boy’s death affects the elderly, often-curmudgeonly, always-reluctant sleuth, who cannot return home to Los Angeles until he finds a way to see justice served.

"Each chapter of this enrapturing novel is elegantly brief and charged with barely contained emotion." --New York Times Book Review A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, for readers of Everything I Never Told You and The Perfect Nanny, What's Left of Me Is Yours...

The Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California—but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles. Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse?

真犯人Xは生きている――。網川は、高井は栗橋の共犯者ではなく、むしろ巻き込まれた被害者だと主張して、「栗橋主犯・高井従犯」説に拠る滋子に反論し、一躍マスコミの寵児となった。

Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award-winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening and poignant new mystery, the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death, brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese-American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II.

孤島に聳え立つ来鴉館で嘘つきたちの饗宴が始まる　お嬢様・彩莉は転がり込んできた莫大な遺産で孤島にギミックつきの館を建設し、かつて自分の書いた小説を馬鹿にした相手を殺害しようと企てる。

県警内部、全員敵！？「どんでん返しの帝王」が贈る、息をもつかせぬノンストップ・ミステリー。単独で麻薬密売ルートを探っていた刑事が、銃で殺された。

超大型台風接近中の日本。国際空港の入管で突如11人が別室に連行された。時間だけが経過し焦燥する彼ら。大規模な通信障害で機器は使用不能。その中の一人の女が「当局はこの中にテロ首謀者がいると見ている。

北米からの帰国者に感染力の高い新型肺炎の疑いが生じる。連行は細菌兵器ゆえの隔離、ヒューマノイド対応だったのか。テロ集団はなぜ「破壊」でなく「消滅」という用語を使うのか。様々な憶測が渦巻くが依然、首謀者が誰か摑めない。

Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win - from a novelty slot machine! - he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly raised when the winner, a friend of Mas’s pal G. I. Hasuike, is found stabbed to death just days later. The last thing Mas wants to do is stick his nose in someone else’s business, but at G. I.’s prodding, he reluctantly agrees to follow the trail of a battered snakeskin shamisen (a traditional Okinawan musical instrument) left at the scene of the crime.

From the time she was a child, Mas Arai’s daughter, Mari, was completely gasa-gasa - never sitting still, always on the go, getting into everything. And Mas, busy tending lawns, gambling, and struggling to put his Hiroshima past behind him, never had much time for the family he was trying to support. For years now, his resentful daughter has lived a continent away in New York City and had a life he knew little about. But an anxious phone call from Mari asking for his help plunges the usually obstinate Mas into a series of startling situations.

千葉県警刑事部捜査一課、高頭冴子班に所属する郡山が親しくしていた隣人、小湊母娘が銃殺遺体となって発見された。容疑者として在日米軍曹長スチュアート・ヒギンスが浮上するが、米軍の圧力、事を荒立てたくない自衛隊の介入により捜査は難航。

A taut psychological thriller about the hidden demons that guide our convictions, our biases, and our deepest desires, available in English for the first time from “Japan’s Agatha Christie.” (The Sunday Times) In the middle of the night, a car drives off a pier. An elderly man drowns, but...

Danger awaits best friends on the island of Malta, where one will be accused of murder and the other of being a spy on the run. A missing journalist cannot tell the world he is still alive by becoming a mystery writer's alibi. When Hiromi came back to Paris to settle an old score, she had no idea her target might be hiding on the island of Malta. But, now, she has a chance to redeem her reputation by neutralizing a rogue agent and capturing the mystery writer who hides agency secrets in his novels.

公園から忽然と姿を消した三歳の琴美。両親は必死に捜すが、一向に見つからない。――22年後。自堕落な生活を送る幸子のもとに、一通の手紙が届く。差出人は、消息不明の妹を捜し続けている男だった。