THE BLACK SWAN MYSTERY

Early one morning, the owner of a local mill is found lying next to the railway tracks just outside of Kuki Station. Suspicion initially falls on the workers' union, with whom the man had been embroiled in a labour dispute, then on a new religious sect that has been gaining followers recently. Chief Inspector Onitsura and his assistant Tanna are called in to investigate, and soon set off in a journey across Japan, from Tokyo to Kyoto and Osaka, and finally to the island of Kyushu, in a hunt for the killer. But as they investigate, the killer strikes again, and again. Will they be able to catch the murderer before even more people are slain? Fans of Agatha Christie's 4.50 from Paddington and Seicho Matsumoto's Tokyo Express will delight in the devious twists and turns of The Black Swan Mystery, as well as in the characterisation and portrait of 1960s Japan. The author, Tetsuya Ayukawa, is considered to be the master of alibi deconstruction mysteries-a talent that is on full display in this brilliant classic railway murder mystery, which won the prestigious Japanese Detective Writers Club Prize.