検事 霞夕子 夜更けの祝電（新潮文庫）

by Shizuko Natsuki, 夏樹 静子

バツイチのOL・山口美幸は39回目の誕生日を迎えるその日、たった一人で孤独をかみしめながら過ごしていた。次の日、彼女は後頭部を鈍器で殴打されて、自分の部屋で死亡していた。部屋には色彩豊かな花瓶に５本の紅いバラと３本のクリーム色のバラが挿されていた。いったい誰が彼女を殺したのか。お多福顔でおっとり口調の検事、霞夕子が鋭く解決する「夜更けの祝電」をはじめ、「橋の下の凶器」「早朝の手紙」「知らなかった」の4篇を収録する人気シリーズ。

217 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2003

About the author

Shizuko Natsuki (夏樹 静子) was born in Tokyo in 1938. She graduated from Keio University with a degree in English literature. She married in 1963 and moved to Fukuoka, where she has lived since that time with the exception of nine years spent in Nagoya. Natsuki is not only one of Japan’s best-selling mystery writers but also one of the most prolific. She has written more than eighty novels and short-story collections, and more than forty of her novels and stories have been made into films.

Natsuki published her first mystery novel, Tenshi ga kiete iku (the angel has gone), in 1970. The first of her novels to be translated into English was W no higeki (1982; Murder at Mount Fuji, 1984). Several of her short stories have been published in translation in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Natsuki’s writing, like that of many other Japanese mystery writers of her generation, often shows the strong influence of well-known mystery writer Seich Matsumoto.