A Quiet Place

By Seicho Matsumoto

"A master crime writer . . . Seicho Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society."The New York Times Book Review

"A stellar psychological thriller with a surprising and immensely satisfying resolution that flows naturally from the book’s complex characterizations.Readers will agree that Matsumoto (19091992) deserves his reputation as Japan’s Georges Simenon.-Publishers Weekly.

While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn’t totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wifewho was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetingsended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood?

When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife’s death he discovers the villa Tachibana near by, a house known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life...

Seicho Matsumoto was Japan's most successful thriller writer. His first detective novel, Points and Lines, sold over a million copies in Japan. Vessel of Sand, published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates in 1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
• Release date: Aug 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781912242733

Seicho Matsumoto

Seicho Matsumoto (1909-1982) was Japan's most successful mystery writer. His first detective novel, Points and Lines, sold over a million copies in Japan. Vessel of Sand, published in English as Inspector Imanishi Investigates in1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit.

Reviews for A Quiet Place

[aug3zimm-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A bit mixed on this book. It started out slowly but was pretty interesting - weirdly, I found the super-polite business and social exchanges really interesting. It was fairly obvious early on that the dude was going a bit nuts but initially I did question if maybe I wasn’t suspending disbelief enough to go along with the narrator. No, I wasn’t. So I wasn’t surprised with the path this took. Though I did think it would escalate a little slower. I was thinking Asai would break into Kubo’s house first.

But after the inevitable happened, the book took a bit of a turn for me. At first, I felt a bit tense and actually sharing the protagonist’s anxiety. But after a bit, I got bored and started counting remaining pages to see how quickly it would be over. It’s a bit ironic then that I found the conclusion a bit sudden. But I suppose it was the same as the first part - I expected one more, more moderate, step of escalation before the inevitable and it was a bit more jarring to not get it at the end.

Oh well. A quick but decent read. I’m not sorry to have read it but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it unless you’ve got a day or two to kill or a particular fondness for Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart".

[annbury_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This compelling mystery comes from another time and place -- Japan in the 1970's -- but the unfamiliar environment adds to the book's power. Mr. Asai, a mid-level bureaucrat, learns that his wife has died of a sudden heart attack. But she died in an unfamiliar neighborhood, under less than clear-cut circumstances. Asai becomes obsessed with the circumstances of her death, starts his own investigation and eventually hires detectives to learn more. In time, he develops a theory of what happened and why, and that is when the real mystery begins. The tone of the book is cool and formal, but Asai is a compelling character, and the suspense grows as the story progresses. Comparisons to Simenon are apt, even though the central character here is not a policeman -- far from it.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is an intriguing Japanese psychological thriller. Perhaps, thriller is not quite the right word, but it's the story of the psychological dissolution of a man after the death of his wife.Tsuneo Asai is an upper mid-level civil servant away on a business trip when he receives word that his wife Eiko has died suddenly. Eiko suffered from a heart condition, so her death is not entirely unexpected. However, after Tsuneo returns home and learns more about the circumstances of her death, he becomes suspicious. At the time Eiko suffered her purported heart attack, she was in a strange part of the city where to Tsuneo's knowledge she had never been and had no reason to visit. He wonders why his wife was in that area, why, with her heart condition she was walking uphill, and what sort of secret life she may have been leading.This is a book with complex characters who think and act within the confines of Japanese cultural expectations. Tsuneo's pursuit of the truth about Eiko's death becomes an all-consuming obsession, and we follow him along the dark paths he travels after he discovers his wife's secrets.Recommended.3 1/2 stars