Inspector Imanishi Investigates (砂の器)

Name: Inspector Imanishi Investigates (砂の器)
Author: Seicho Matsumoto

Seicho Matsumoto

— 1961 —

“

Detective Imanishi's obsessive, years-long investigation into a Tokyo murder leads across Japan's regional dialects and class hierarchies.

The record

Time
An eveningA season
313 pages, about 6 hours: about the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climb
Before dawn at Kamata Station, Tokyo, an unidentified man’s body is found on the train tracks.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live by
In 10 reviews from critics and book blogs, 7 credit the plot and 7 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else does
A Los Angeles Times blurb ranks it with Christie and Simenon.

on green tea and bonsai
“He cultivates a bonsai and enjoys green tea poured over rice.”
a book blog
on the food
“I was consistently craving food throughout this book”
a book blog
on postwar Japan
“thoughtfully explores the changes taking place in Japanese society at the time”
a book blog
on his wife Yoshiko
“Their relationship and Yoshiko’s conduct of course reflect the mores of the time”
a book blog

on the final chapters
“Show me, don’t tell me!”
a book blog
on the pace
“the pace is more leisurely than in the other two Matsumoto novels I’ve read”
a book blog
on the clues
“some of them a little too neatly dropped in his lap”
a book blog
on the women characters
“the uniformly subservient characterisation of women”
a book blog