The Voice and Other Stories

In the world of mystery fiction, the perfect crime remains very much an elusive ideal. Whether betrayed by a minor oversight or exposed by the dogged brilliance of a master sleuth, criminals are faced with the inevitable conclusion that crime does not pay This theme is echoed in these six stories by Japan’s foremost detective writer, Seicho Matsumoto, as he offers us fresh glimpses into the workings of the criminal mind. What fascinates Matsumoto is not only the motives for a crime but the psychological factors that lead to it. Add to this an element of fate that can thwart the most meticulous planning and you have tales powerful in their suspense. Ironically enough, it is often the criminal himself who, by his very cautiousness, slips the noose around his own neck. These stories–“The Accomplice,” “The Face,” “The Serial,” “Beyond All Suspicion,” “The Voice,” and “The Woman Who Wrote Haiku”–are masterpieces of dramatic setting and situational suspense. They are all the more absorbing because they concern ordinary people leading humdrum lives–a switchboard operator, a bank clerk, a bar hostess. Yet each is thrown by fate into a chance encounter with crime and violent death. As the characters reel about in a maelstrom of their own making, the reader finds himself pulled in, too, and is only released at the very last line.