Point Zero

Point Zero

By Seichō Matsumot

Translated By:-Louise Heal Kawai

Genre:-Crime Fiction/Translated Fiction

Pages:-288

Publisher:-Bitter Lemon Press

Blurb:-Tokyo, 1958. Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara, ten years her senior an advertising man recommended by a go-between. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Teiko travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance. When Kenichi's brother comes to help her, he is murdered, poisoned in his hotel room.

 Soon, Teiko discovers that her husband's disappearance is tied up with the so-called "pan-pan girls", women who worked as prostitutes catering to American GIs after the war. Now, ten years later, as the country is recovering, there are those who are willing to take extreme measures to hide the past.

"A master crime writer...Seichō Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society,"-The New York Times Book Review.

• A triumph by Seicho Matsumoto, the master of Japanese mystery writing. A beautifully written crime novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation
• First published in Japanese in 1959, the novel abandoned the template of  closed-room mysteries so popular in pre-war Japan to embrace social criticism
• In a radical departure from tradition, the novel has a female protagonist, a housewife seeking to find her missing husband. Respectful of the proprieties expected of a Japanese woman of the time, but stubborn, intrepid and a naturally intuitive sleuth.

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My Review:-Teiko wants to find a husband.....Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara. Even though Kenichi is ten years older than Teiko, he's an advertising man, recommended by an intermediary a match maker. Four days after their honeymoon Kenichi goes missing. Kenichi was last seen in the city of Kanazawa. Teiko needs to find her husband and decides to travel to Kanazawa. Kenichi knows it's not going to be as easy as she thought, no one at his workplace or in the town has any idea what has happened to Kanazawa. Teiko must become the investigator with some help from a policeman and he brother-in-law. The only problem is more people turn up dead including her brother-in-law. It's not long that she finds it has something to do with 'pan pan girls'. Will she find out what's happened before it's to late. I wasn't sure what to expect in this book but I'm glad I decided to read it, a few twists and turns I didn't expect.