The bodies of Sayama and Toki are found dead on a beach in Kashii Bay, a double suicide using cyanide. The case is closed. But two detectives don’t believe it, Torigai, an old policeman from Hakata and Mihara, a young policeman from Tokyo. Sayama was going to be charged in a corruption case, but why drag Toki into the suicide, especially since no one knew they were a couple. Digging deeper, some things don’t add up, including the fact that Yasuda, a businessman who knew Toki, is in the station with two of Toki’s colleagues when she boards the train with Sayama two platforms away. Only a four-minute window allowed this visibility. The truth will be uncovered thanks to the stubbornness of the two policemen and to the train and plane schedules that crisscrossed Japan in 1947. An extremely well-crafted murder story, with meticulously collected clues. Quite enjoyable.
“The crossing of the trains is inevitable in time, but the meeting of their passengers in space is entirely accidental. I can fantasize endlessly about the lives led by all these people who, in faraway places, are brushing past each other at this very moment. I derive far more enjoyment from these flights of fancy than from any novel produced by someone else’s imagination. Mine is the solitary, wandering pleasure of dreams.”
Listened to as an audiobook