A thrillingly dark novel from 'Japan's Agatha Christie' (Sunday Times).

While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wife, who was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetings, ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighbourhood?

When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife's death, he discovers the Villa Tachibana nearby, a house known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life...

Specifications

• Author: Seicho Matsumoto
• Translator: Louise Heal Kawai
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 240
• Language: English (translated from Japanese)
• Dimensions: Approx. 19.7 × 12.8 × 1.5 cm
• ISBN: 9780241744208