A Death in Tokyo

A Mystery (The Kyoichiro Kaga Series, Book 3)

By: Keigo Higashino

Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan

In the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo an unusual statue of a Japanese mythic beast—a kirin—stands guard over the district from the classic Nihonbashi bridge. In the evening, a man who appears to be very drunk staggers onto the bridge and collapses right under the statue of the winged beast. The patrolman who sees this scene unfold, goes to rouse the man, only to discover that the man was not passed out, he was dead; that he was not drunk, he was stabbed in the chest. However, where he died was not where the crime was committed—the key to solving the crime is to find out where he was attacked and why he made such a super human effort to carry himself to the Nihonbashi Bridge. That same night, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident while attempting to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man.

Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga is assigned to the team investigating the murder—and must bring his skills to bear to uncover what actually happened that night on the Nihonbashi bridge. What, if any, connection is there between the murdered man and Yashima, the young man caught with his wallet? Kaga's investigation takes him down dark roads and into the unknown past to uncover what really happened and why.

©2011 Keigo Higashino; translation copyright 2022 by Giles Murray (P)2022 Tantor

Great whodunit, odd narration

A great mystery without the exploitative details of most of the crime genre. The narrator does not sound like a real person, which bothered me a lot at first. I ended up getting used to their robotic intonation, thankfully. Hoping for another Detective Kaga mystery in the future.

The regret that so many realized.

I loved every minute of this story. It made me reflect on the silly things we all do as kids.

Good who-done-it

Though crimes were committed, it was a relief to not have to read sordid, sick details of most murder mysteries. The narrator was great, but since the translation was obviously done by a Brit, so the narration would have benefited being read by someone with a British accent.

Bad reader

The story is an interesting look at Japanese culture- but the narrator is awful. It was very hard to get past his narration

Great story

I really enjoy this series. This and the other books have very interesting stories that I have not been able to solve. My only side note would be that since it is a Japanese book and translated to English the narrator ends most of his sentences with an up note .. like a question. And of course the names are impossible to keep straight since most are very similar but the author does a good job with the story so you can figure out who is who.