Murder at the Black Cat Café

Translated by Bryan Karetnyk
Paperback
$17.95 US
On sale Sep 09, 2025 | 224 Pages | 9781805335511

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FROM ONE OF JAPAN'S GREATEST CRIME WRITERS—THE AUTHOR OF THE HONJIN MURDERS: Nothing at The Black Cat Café is as it seems. . .

In order to solve this sensational stand-alone murder mystery, scruffy detective Kosuke Kindaichi will have to untangle a complex web of love, jealousy, and betrayal


In post-war Tokyo, still recovering from the devastating wartime bombing raids, a patrolling policeman passing The Black Cat Café makes a gruesome discovery: the body of a woman, lying in a hastily dug hole, with a dead black cat by her side. The woman’s face is disfigured beyond recognition, and the café’s black cat seems alive and well, so where did the two corpses come from, and why were they buried in the café’s garden?

As the legendary scruffy sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi investigates, he realizes the café’s enigmatic madam, Oshima, has a past shrouded in secrecy, and what exactly is her relationship with the owner, Itoshima?

Murder at the Black Cat Café is the latest instalment in the Kosuke Kindaichi mysteries—the classic series that made Seishi Yokomizo Japan’s greatest and best-loved crime writer of all time. This edition also includes a bonus story, ‘The Well Wheel Creaks’.
© Seishi Yokomizo
Seishi Yokomizo (1902-81) was one of Japan's most famous and best-loved mystery writers. He was born in Kobe and spent his childhood reading detective stories, before beginning to write stories of his own, the first of which was published in 1921. He went on to become an extremely prolific and popular author, best known for his Kosuke Kindaichi series, which ran to 77 books, many of which were adapted for stage and television in Japan. The Honjin Murders is the first Kosuke Kindaichi story, and regarded as one of Japan's great mystery novels. It won the first Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948 but has never been translated into English, until now. View titles by Seishi Yokomizo

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FROM ONE OF JAPAN'S GREATEST CRIME WRITERS—THE AUTHOR OF THE HONJIN MURDERS: Nothing at The Black Cat Café is as it seems. . .

In order to solve this sensational stand-alone murder mystery, scruffy detective Kosuke Kindaichi will have to untangle a complex web of love, jealousy, and betrayal


In post-war Tokyo, still recovering from the devastating wartime bombing raids, a patrolling policeman passing The Black Cat Café makes a gruesome discovery: the body of a woman, lying in a hastily dug hole, with a dead black cat by her side. The woman’s face is disfigured beyond recognition, and the café’s black cat seems alive and well, so where did the two corpses come from, and why were they buried in the café’s garden?

As the legendary scruffy sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi investigates, he realizes the café’s enigmatic madam, Oshima, has a past shrouded in secrecy, and what exactly is her relationship with the owner, Itoshima?

Murder at the Black Cat Café is the latest instalment in the Kosuke Kindaichi mysteries—the classic series that made Seishi Yokomizo Japan’s greatest and best-loved crime writer of all time. This edition also includes a bonus story, ‘The Well Wheel Creaks’.

Author

© Seishi Yokomizo
Seishi Yokomizo (1902-81) was one of Japan's most famous and best-loved mystery writers. He was born in Kobe and spent his childhood reading detective stories, before beginning to write stories of his own, the first of which was published in 1921. He went on to become an extremely prolific and popular author, best known for his Kosuke Kindaichi series, which ran to 77 books, many of which were adapted for stage and television in Japan. The Honjin Murders is the first Kosuke Kindaichi story, and regarded as one of Japan's great mystery novels. It won the first Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948 but has never been translated into English, until now. View titles by Seishi Yokomizo