Murder at the Black Cat Café

＂In post-war Tokyo, still recovering from the devastating wartime bombing raids, a patrolling policeman passing the Black Cat Cafâe makes a gruesome discovery: the body of a woman, lying in a hastily dug-out hole, with a dead black cat by her side. The woman’s face is disfigured beyond recognition, and the cafeâs black cat seems alive and well, so where did the two corpses come from, and why were they buried in the cafâe’s garden? As the legendary scruffy sleuth Kosuke Kindaichi investigates, he realizes the cat’s enigmatic madam, Oshima, has a past shrouded in secrecy, and what exactly is her relationship with the owner, Itoshima?＂-Publisher description.

Seishi Yokomizo (1902-81) was one of Japan’s most famous and best-loved mystery writers. Born in Kobe and spent his childhood reading detective stories, before beginning to write stories of his own, the first of which was published in 1921. He went on to become an extremely prolific and popular author, best known for his Kosuke Kindaichi series, which ran to 77 books, many of which were adapted for stage and television in Japan. The Honjin Murders, The Inugami Curse, The Village of Eight Graves, Death on Gokumon Island, The Devil’s Flute Murders and The Little Sparrow Murders are also available from Pushkin Vertigo.

Bryan Karetnyk is a translator of Japanese and Russian literature. His recent translations for Pushkin Press include Seishi Yokomizo’s The Village of Eight Graves, Futaro Yamada’s The Meiji Guillotine Murders, Taku Ashibe’s Murder in the House of Omari and Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s Murder in the Age of Enlightenment.