乗り遅れた女

by Shizuko Natsuki

新幹線に乗り遅れたと、東京駅から新潟までタクシーを飛ばした女は、好物のはずの夕食の蕎麦をなぜ残したのか?―「乗り遅れた女」。深夜タバコを買いに出、交通事故に遭った男の妻とその犯人は、なぜ監察医に会いに行ったのか?―「三分のドラマ」。もしかしたら犯人は私だったかもしれない…。身近で緻密なミステリー6編。

Tankobon Hardcover

First published October 1, 1995

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.