Originally published in 1961, this Japanese mystery has been a teasing presence on my TBR for a while. The recent Penguin edition of the book cover pushed me over the edge and I finally gave in. The cover has a sage green border with a black-and-white photograph of a woman entering a seedy bar in Tokyo. This cover is a perfect juxtaposition for the book itself, where the peaceful scenery of rural Japan meets the dark underbelly of Tokyo.

The book follows Inspector Imanishi as he connects the dots between the murder of an unidentified man and the members of an intellectual collective called the Nouveau group.

While the overarching storyline kept me captivated, some details seemed rather amateurish. For instance, two major characters, closely related to the crime, at different points in the book, move into neighborhoods close to Imanishi. One character moves near his house and another into his sister’s apartment complex. Considering the size of Tokyo, this is so so improbable. In another instance, he randomly comes across the main suspects of the case at a railway station. Again, this feels too improbable.

Any seasoned reader of mystery novels would be able to identify the killer halfway through the book. However, the only thing that kept turning the pages was the motive. Imanishi has to travel back in time and reconstruct the killer’s childhood to understand the motive. This reconstruction is the most interesting part of the story as it allows the reader to delve into the killer’s psyche. But despite the grand backstory, the killer’s motive wasn’t convincing or particularly satisfying.

I initially thought Imanishi’s portrayal as just a regular detective instead of robotic geniuses like Poirot or Detective Galileo would be refreshing. But I was proven wrong. He was rather boring and really had no distinctive personality. Maybe it’s the translation.

This book is loved by many, enough to have earned itself a place as a crime fiction classic. But it’s filled with too many improbable plotlines for me to ignore.