Kyotaro Nishimura (pseudonym of Kihachiro Yajima, born 6 September 1930 in Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese writer of mystery stories. Nishimura is best known for his "train series" mysteries. He won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1981 for The Terminal Murder Case.
Do you like your Kyôtarô Nishimura light, short and not very complicated? Then this is a perfect book for you. Keeping the traditional Nishimura traits: good atmosphere, interesting beginning, lots of conversation and a weak ending, "外国人墓地を見て死ね" keeps things entertaining enough, but is empty and vacuous, and loses its chance with a mystery that could have been so much better developed.
It all starts with a woman killed in a cemetery for foreigners in Yokohama. Nishimoto, one of Totsugawa underlings, is there because an old friend of his asked him to go there for some advice. He is thoroughly surprised when he sees that the person killed is identified as his friend, even though he knows she is not the dead person.
From that moment on, we get the advance-the-plot conversations, and good situations that are typical of Nishimura, but we also get the head-scratching flights of fancy that Totsugawa and other characters take to advance the plot, and an ending that is weaker than normally in his books, with so many loose ends that you could sew a sweater with them.
If you don't have much to do on a rainy afternoon, you can read this short book, but there are so many better options. This older Nishimura doesn't stack up with his earlier work. A weak effort.
The best: rhythm, characters, easy to read, it has some interesting moments
The worst: the plot jumps sideways to some surreal developments, the end is rushed, the mystery is pretty non-existent
Other options: well, other Nishimura novels like "終着駅殺人事件" or "消えたタンカー"; there are so many other writers too, like Ranpo Edogawa, Yusuke Kishi, Natsuo Kirino... Or leave Japan and go for some other options, like Scandinavian mysteries, Agatha Christie... Options, so many options...