Ellery Queen's Japanese Mystery Stories

"As an anthologist, Ellery Queen is without peer, his taste unequalled. As a bibliographer and a collector of the detective short story, Queen is, again, a historical personage. Indeed, Ellery Queen clearly is, after Poe, the most important American in mystery fiction." — Otto Penzler, from Detectionary: A Biographical Dictionary of Leading Characters in Mystery Fiction

The 12 stories in this book will lead you through dramatic twists and unexpected turns—a newspaper receives a letter from a man claiming to have been murdered; five strangers who share the same initials are invited to spend the night in a luxury hotel…but one of them is a murderer.

The legendary Ellery Queen selected these stories by award-winning Japanese authors from among many thousands published in postwar Japan. Each story features an unusual crime and a complex set of clues investigated by a diverse and colorful cast of characters that includes a calculating inspector, a tenacious journalist, and a determined scientist.

The stories include:

• "Perfectly Lovely Ladies" by Kawabata Award winner Yasutaka Tsutsui: Eight women fight the high cost of living using violent means but will they get away with murder?
• "The Cooperative Defendant" by Akutagawa Prize winner Seicho Matsumoto: After a man confesses to a killing, he retracts his confession and accuses the detectives of coercion. But who is right?
• "Devil of a Boy by Edogawa Ranpo Prize winner Seiichi Morimura: A schoolboy may still be very young but he is as sinister as the most hardened of criminals…or is someone else involved?
• "The Kindly Blackmailer" by Mystery Writers of Japan Award winner Kyotaro Nishimura: A man involved in a fatal hit-and-run is blackmailed by a mysterious witness. Who is this enigmatic stranger?