My only disappointment with Inspector Imanishi Investigates was discovering that it’s the only novel in the late Seicho Matsumoto’s Imanishi series (at least one blurb implies there is a series) that has been translated into English. Close on the heels of that disappointment was learning that Matsumoto died in 1992.

I was excited to find out, however, that this novel was made into a 1974 film titled Suna no utsuwa (aka Castle of Sand), which not only garnered an impressive number of awards, but has been called “one of the masterpieces of Japanese cinema.”

In the novel, Inspector Imanishi—an older, haiku-writing policeman in Tokyo—is investigating the brutal murder of a retired policeman, found beaten to death near a Tokyo train station. Along with Yoshimura, a younger policeman who sometimes assists him, Imanishi doggedly pursues the killer, through many seemingly hopeless dead ends, for years. Utimately Imanishi uncovers a complex crime that involves members of an elite young group of “Noveau Art” intellectuals: musicians, writers, architects and critics.

The depiction of Japanese life in the late 50s/early 60s (I think…the exact dates are never given) is fascinating. There’s no question that the events in the novel are of a different time and place, the whole suffused with a foreignness that is enhanced by the very utilitarian translation. Imanishi, representative of the older order, dignified and mannered, is starkly at odds with the young intellectuals who are determined to remake art, architecture, and finally politics into a new form suitable for their perception of modernity. Yoshimura, who is of the same age as the revolutionary-minded Nouveau crew, is nonetheless an admirer of Imanishi, learning from the older, weary detective crucial methods that are in danger of being lost in a new political landscape.

That Imanishi is also a (very modest) author of haiku, a formal and intensely polite man, whose depiction never veers into cliché significantly enhances the complex, but believable plot. Inspector Imanishi Investigates is more than just a murder mystery, but a fascinating cultural artifact.

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Peter Lovesey’s second entry in the (ex)-Detective Peter Diamond series won’t win any awards for plausibility—Diamond, no longer a member of the Bath police force due to a (bogus) charge of unlawful force, has been reduced to working as a security guard at Harrods, where he discovers a young, apparently mute Japanese girl hiding in the store and is then enlisted by one of Japan’s top Sumo wrestlers to engage in a global search to find her when she subsequently goes missing. Like I said, not a particularly plausible plot.

But I found the book enjoyable as further entree into the mind of the rotund, rowdy, and undeniably bright Peter Diamond. I’ll be looking for the next in the series. Recommended.

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[I’m going to have a difficult time catching up with my 999 Challenge reading if I keep reading books that even I can’t creatively fit into one of my categories. Nonetheless, I do keep reading, though I have fallen off the wagon when it comes to making entries here. So…]

Peter Lovesey’s The Last Detective is the first in a series of contemporary British mysteries featuring the—I must invoke the necessary clichés here—irascible and cynical Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond. I picked the book up by chance, intrigued by the description and having been impressed (as you’ll see in future entries here) with other novels in the Soho Crime series.

In many ways, Peter Diamond is one of a number of stereotypical detectives—cantankerous and gruff but with some softness left in his heart, bright and tenacious but not politically adept—but Lovesey portrays him in such a way that it’s impossible not to like him even if the reader sometimes has to cringe while doing so. Given these facts, that Diamond is regularly in the midst of political intrigues in which his continued employment—much less his present position—are at risk almost goes without saying.

The Last Detective’s plot is a bit convoluted, involving the death of a washed-up actress, a complex of events surrounding various suspects—including her English Literature professor husband, and some missing letters by Jane Austen. I did guess who the killer was about 2/3 of the way through, but I couldn’t be sure until the end… and there was plenty of plot left to be interested in.

Lovesey’s novel has an interesting construction, featuring two interludes in which primary suspects tell their story rather than relaying it through the process of interrogation. This worked well, though the voices weren’t wholly convincing… they escaped the fate of sounding too much like the main character, but they didn’t exactly sound authentic either.

All in all, a very satisfying debut of an interesting character in a novel that deservedly won an Anthony Award for Best Novel. In fact, after reading the second in the series (more on that later), I revised my opinion of the novel even higher as I start to see a better picture of how unique Peter Diamond really is. Recommended.

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