An enjoyable book for mystery lovers, although something kept it from being top notch. Set in Tokyo soon after WWII ended, I think it would have been more interesting to have more background about the city itself during that time.
The locked room isn't a large part of the puzzle, and explained away almost nonchalantly by one of the characters (who I found slightly unbelievable). There is quite a lot of background about tattooing, which was interesting and integral to the uncovering of the killer.
This was a translation (copyrighted in 1998) and a few phrases seemed to me they couldn't really have been meant that way in the Japanese, or in jargon of the late 1940's.
The locked room isn't a large part of the puzzle, and explained away almost nonchalantly by one of the characters (who I found slightly unbelievable). There is quite a lot of background about tattooing, which was interesting and integral to the uncovering of the killer.
This was a translation (copyrighted in 1998) and a few phrases seemed to me they couldn't really have been meant that way in the Japanese, or in jargon of the late 1940's.
