The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo

Sometimes I am good when it comes to picking out books and sometimes I am just plain lucky, and in this case it is the later rather than the former. I have been using a web site with murder mysteries pictured that are published each month in order to keep abreast of authors that I read routinely, but also to read authors that I do not know or have not read, but who have published more than one one book. The sad truth is that while I am getting older, so are the authors that I have been reading, along with my spouse, for the entirety of our relationship, and so I need to find new things to read. I really like the website, because it turns out I really need the pictures as well as the title to pay attention--I am constantly discovering that I am very visual and without it I have trouble paying attention, and it seems to be worse not better as I get older. So I am grateful it exists and that I found it, but the downside is that there is no information about the books beyond author, title and the cover--with a reference to the detective and which number in the series this is. So the good news is that I really liked this, and it is one of a series of books by the same author. He is long gone now, having published his first murder mystery in 1921, and this one is from the early 1950's. He was the first to write in this genre in Japan, and he has over 70 published novels, only 6 of them translated into English. The complexity of the mystery as well as the characters is right up my alley and I will read the rest of them, but I am most grateful to have discovered this author, and to know a little bit more about writing from Japan.