霧氷

by Shizuko Natsuki

八尋由花は、恵まれた境遇にありながら、育児疲れとストレスから、わが子を窒息死させてしまう。その後、雲仙の雪中を彷徨っているところを、女流陶芸家の乾陶子に救われる。妊娠中の陶子は行方不明の恋人を捜していた。やがて、由花の子殺し事件の公判が進行するなかで、意外な事実が明らかになる。二人の女性の生き方を通して、「子は誰のものか」を問う力作。

Paperback Bunko

Published July 20, 2007

About the author

Shizuko Natsuki (夏樹 静子) was born in Tokyo in 1938. She graduated from Keio University with a degree in English literature. She married in 1963 and moved to Fukuoka, where she has lived since that time with the exception of nine years spent in Nagoya. Natsuki is not only one of Japan’s best-selling mystery writers but also one of the most prolific. She has written more than eighty novels and short-story collections, and more than forty of her novels and stories have been made into films.

Natsuki published her first mystery novel, Tenshi ga kiete iku (the angel has gone), in 1970. The first of her novels to be translated into English was W no higeki (1982; Murder at Mount Fuji, 1984). Several of her short stories have been published in translation in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Natsuki’s writing, like that of many other Japanese mystery writers of her generation, often shows the strong influence of well-known mystery writer Seich Matsumoto.