Tracker

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
Soji Shimada

Book cover art for The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
Book cover art for The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

Soji Shimada

One of The Guardian’s “Top 10 Locked Room Mysteries” An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this “bloody and bi
 One of The Guardian’s “Top 10 Locked Room Mysteries” An amateur detective races to solve a decades-old murder mystery in this “bloody and bizarre” Japanese crime novel with a twist hailed as “one of the most original” (Daily Mail). Astrologer, fortune teller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years—in just one week. With the help of his freelance illustrator friend, Kiyoshi sets out to answer the questions that have haunted the country ever since: Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, ‘the perfect woman’? With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion—pieced together like a great stage tragedy—challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain falls. This quintessential Japanese “logic mystery”—eerie, gory, and intriguing—combines the puzzle-solving of Golden Age Western detective fiction with elements of shocking horror and dark humor.
Buy a copy

YAML for Review

---
public: false
title: "Book Review — The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada"
date:
tags:
  - entertainment
  - books
  - review
  - Fiction
description: "One of my sporadic book reviews"
layout: "book-review"
hero: "/images/book-review.jpg"
teaserImage: true
book:
  title: "The Tokyo Zodiac Murders"
  author: "Soji Shimada"
  publishedDate: "Tue Aug 05 2025 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)"
  rating: "0"
  url: "https://www.ebooks.com/en-gb/searchapp/searchresults.net?term=9781805335153"
---