The Tattoo Murder

An ingenious classic Japanese murder mystery, set in post-war Tokyo and steeped in the illicit subculture of Yakuza tattoos 'Like voyeurs, we follow Takagi down the charred streets of bombed-out Tokyo to scenes of fastidiously executed decadence' New York Times Can you solve the mystery of the tattoo murder? Tokyo, 1947. At the first post-war meeting of the Edo Tattoo Society, Kinue Nomura reveals her full-body snake tattoo to rapturous applause. Days later she is gone. A dismembered corpse is discovered in the locked bathroom of her home, but her much-coveted body art is nowhere to be found. Kinue's horrified lover joins forces with the boy detective Kyosuke Kamizu to try to get to the bottom of the macabre crime, but similar deaths soon follow. Is someone being driven to murder by their lust for tattooed skin, and can they be stopped? Set in a seedy Tokyo of bomb sites, dive bars and Yakuza gangs, The Tattoo Murder  is one of Japan's most ingenious and legendary whodunits.

Akimitsu Takagi was born in Japan in 1920 and worked as an aeronautical engineer until he decided to become a mystery writer on the recommendation of a fortune teller. He went on to become of the country's most popular crime authorsand, winning the prestigious Mystery Writers Club Award. The Tattoo Murder was Takagi's debut. It was first published in 1948 but has never been published in the UK until now.