This book is a colorful collection of Japanese crime stories in English.
The ideal detective-crime-mystery story of today, in the eyes of Japanese writers and critics, is “one which, although written around a believable framework, is first and foremost a detective fiction.” And that definition is exemplified and adhered to in most of the stories that make up the Japanese Golden Dozen.
The twelve stories in this book offer you detection of all types—deductive, intuitional, and procedural—and a “complete calendar of crime” ranging from theft and poisoning to blackmail and murder. You will meet a variety of crime investigators, both official and amateur, including legal, journalist, and scientific detectives, in locales as different as a police inquest, a barber shop, a hospital, and a luxurious hotel.
You will find in the diverse styles humor and horror, in the diverse plots “vampires” and villains—hours of excitement and escape, of suspense and suspension of disbelief, days of entertainment and adventure, and weeks of afterthoughts about the serious problems of modern living.
