A Quiet Place [Paperback]

A master crime writer . . . Seicho Matsumoto's thrillers dissect Japanese society. —The New York Times Book Review

A stellar psychological thriller with a surprising and immensely satisfying resolution that flows naturally from the book’s complex characterizations. Readers will agree that Matsumoto (1909–1992) deserves his reputation as Japan’s Georges Simenon.-Publishers Weekly

While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn’t totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wife—who was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetings—ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood?

When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife’s death he discovers the villa Tachibana near by, a house known to be a meeting place for secret lovers. As he digs deeper into his wife's recent past, he must eventually conclude that she led a double life...

Seicho Matsumotowas Japan's most successful thriller writer. His first detective novel,Points and Lines, sold over a million copies in Japan.Vessel of Sand, published in English asInspector Imanishi Investigatesin 1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit.

Seicho Matsumoto: Seicho Matsumoto (1909–1992) did not see his first book published until he was in his forties. He was a prolific author, producing in four decades more than 450 works. He is considered Japan's most accomplished writer of mystery and detective fiction.

Matsumoto’s first full-length detective fiction, Ten to sen ('Points and Lines'), after running as a newspaper serial from 1957 to 1ls