Tokyo Express: A Novel [Paperback]

From “Japan's Agatha Christie” (The Sunday Times): A secluded bay. An apparent lovers’ suicide. And a pair of detectives with a nagging suspicion that the pieces don’t add up. Can you solve one of the most astonishing literary puzzles ever written?

“An irresistible Hitchcockian gem: a fiendishly plotted crime novel told in crisp, elegant prose.”—Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

In a rocky cove at Hakata Bay, the bodies of a young and beautiful couple are discovered. Standing on the cold beach, the police see nothing to investigate: The flush of the couple’s cheeks and the empty juice bottle speak clearly of cyanide, of a lovers’ suicide. But in the eyes of two men, senior detective Torigai Jutaro and Kiichi Mihara, a young gun from Tokyo, something is not quite right. Together, they begin to pick at the knot of a unique and calculated crime.

Now widely available in English for the first time, Tokyo Express is celebrated around the world as Seichō Matsumoto’s masterpiece.“The debut novel of bestselling writer Seichō Matsumoto . . . first published in Japan in 1958 and never out of print, [is an] ingeniously plotted railway mystery.”—The Guardian

“[Tokyo Express] stands out thanks to the ‘elegant spareness of the prose,’ as Amor Towles writes in his introduction, but also because of the ingenuity of the tightly coiled plot . . . this novel floored me, and I expect it will floor other new readers, too.”—New York Times Book Review


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