Japanese Honkaku Mysteries

Beignets are one of the many foods you should try if you ever visit New Orleans. They’re also really good when you make them! Imma shows us to glory here.

Credited as the first Honkaku writer, Taro Hirai wrote under the pen name Edogawa Rampo. His character, detective Akechi Kogoro, starred in several of Hirai’s mysteries, and became a popular character in Japan. Here, the character isn’t the well-dressed finished product he would become known as. But, with a style that was inspired by Sherlock Holmes, his skills are on full display in these stories — women disappear at a bathhouse, abductions and robberies threaten a city, a human hand falls out of a person’s pocket.

The K apartments are being moved intact and the whole event is being publicized as a major accomplishment in engineering. But there are secrets the building holds — like a child’s body that lies buried in a communal bath under the building, the kidnapping of the son of an American officer, and more. As these secrets come to light, who is behind the scenes controlling things still remains a mystery.

This is one of the most popular books of the genre that introduced another of Japan’s well-known literary detectives, the bedraggled Kosuke Kindaichi. In 1937, the well-respected Ichiyanagi family will host a grand wedding for their son, but the positive hype surrounding the event are marred by talks of a masked man who’s been asking questions around town. When the wedding night comes, so does a scream and a murder, with the only clue being a bloody samurai sword in the snow.

This is more of a psychological thriller, but the author is part of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of America. Yuki, Akiko, Sae, and Maki were only girls when a stranger tricked them into leaving their friend Emily alone. Later Emily is found murdered and the girls were never able to give a useable description of the person to the police. Fifteen years after Emily’s death, readers see how the trauma of losing their friend has affected the now women.