検事霞夕子 夜更けの祝電

by Shizuko Natsuki, 夏樹 静子

だれも祝ってくれない誕生日。孤独をかみしめながら、その日彼女は無惨に殺された。現場に残されたダイイング・メッセージが事件の鍵を握る「夜更けの祝電」。不幸な結婚のせいで自殺した友人のため、復讐を企てた女の思い詰めた気持ちが切ない「早朝の手紙」。その他いずれ劣らぬ難事件を、東京地検主任検事、霞夕子が華麗に推理する。

217 pages, Tankobon Hardcover

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.