I haven’t been talking about books for a while… Here is a great book that I’ve just finished: Shinjuku Shark by Arimasa Osawa.

This book has been published in Japan seventeen years ago and launched the career of Osawa as one of Japan’s premier mystery writers. It is now for the first time available in translation and it is a very intense and realistic police thriller that puts the reader right into the action and shows parts of the underbelly of Japan’s society that is usually not open to foreigners.

I really enjoyed the detailed description of the police work and the lead character is a very memorable police man that is willing to bend the rules and fight crime on his own terms.

It is worth to remember that this book is now almost eighteen years old, since some of the situations in story would play out very differently in a world full of cell phones. But the crime and its resolution is still as valid and fresh as the day the story was written and I very much recommend this book to readers with an interest in crime fiction and Japan.