Best known for his humorous mysteries, Akagawa's first short story, "Ghost Train", was published in 1976 and went on to win the annually granted All Yomimono New Mystery Writers' Prize by Bungeishunjū, a Japanese literary publishing company. Other works of his, The Incident in the Bedroom Suburb (ホームタウンの事件簿 私語を禁ず Homu Taun no Jikenbo: Shigo o Kinzu?) and Voice from Heaven (天からの声 Ten kara no Koe?), were later made into anime, while Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (セーラー服と機関銃 Serafuku to Kikanju?) was made into a popular live action movie. His most recognized works to date pertain to his Mike-neko (or Calico cat) Holmes series. He is extremely prolific; as of August 2006, he had written more than 480 novels in the course of his thirty year career, over 300 million individual published volumes.
I tried very hard to like this book, but the best I could manage was to not hate it. Perhaps some of this is my fault for expecting some dynamic adventures featuring the thief and detective couple, but it turned out to be almost entirely a one man show. On top of that the main female character was very flat as a character and felt entirely comprised on stereotypes. There were some points in which the story was genuinely entertaining, but they weren't quite enough to make up for some of the other problems I had with story elements.