Point Zero - Paperback

by Seicho Matsumoto (Author), Louise Heal Kawai (Translator)

"A master crime writer...Seichō Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society."--The New York Times. A beautifully written mystery novel that takes on the taboo of Japanese prostitution catering to GIs during the American post-war occupation.

Tokyo 1958, Teiko marries Kenichi Uhara, ten years her senior, an advertising man recommended by an intermediary. After a four-day honeymoon, Kenichi vanishes. Teiko travels to the coastal and snow-bound city of Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen, to investigate his disappearance.

She discovers he had been a police officer in Tokyo after the war, keeping watch over pan pan girls, Japanese prostitutes catering to GIs. Some of these women have created a new life in Kanazawa and may have taken extreme measures to hide their past.

"Do you aspire to be a connoisseur of the best international crime fiction? If so, Seicho Matsumoto's Point Zero should be on your bedside table. Become acquainted with a crime master." Financial Times

Author Biography

The Author and the Translator

Seichō Matsumoto (1909-1982) was Japan's most successful mystery writer. His first detective novel, Points and Lines, sold over a million copies in Japan. Vessel of Sand, published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates in1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit. Bitter Lemon published his novel A Quiet Place in 2016. Louise Heal Kawai comes from Manchester. She has spent the past twenty years Japan and currently lives in Yokohama. Her translations include Daido Tamaki's Milk, Tendo Shoko's best-selling autobiography Yakuza Moon, and for Bitter Lemon, Matsumoto's A Quiet Place.