The Murdered Husband Returns

Japanese crime fiction is currently in vogue within British publishing. Penguin Classics are reissuing Seicho Matsumoto and Quercus are releasing the works of Jiro Akagawa; while Pushkin Press focus on newer [left of field] works, such as from the mysterious Uketsu, an apocalyptic debut crime mystery from Akane Araki and the survivalist thriller from Haruo Yuki. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until Bonnier Books’ crime fiction imprint Zaffre came to the party with the Japanese bestseller by Mina Sakurai. This slim novel is a curious blend of styles as it combines the Japanese traditional ‘golden age / impossible crime’ subgenre with the newer more disturbing ‘unreliable narrator / dual time frame’ crime thriller.  

The plot of Sakurai’s novel is very strange. A Tokyo-based fashion designer, Mana Suzukura lives an isolated life [as a single woman] working long hours for a new start-up specialising in women’s apparel. She is being stalked by a supplier – Hodaka. The stalker ambushes her at her apartment doorway after following her home. Mana is saved by her husband Kazuki Suzukura who confronts the stalker forcing Hodaka to flee. The problem is that Mana had murdered her husband Kazuki by pushing him down a ravine five years earlier [while living in the prefecture of Sendai]. Fleeing the crime scene, she settled in Tokyo starting a new life, and putting her abusive marriage into the past.

And there hangs the tale.

The narrative unspools over four chapters as the reader’s anxiety about the new situation plays in-concert with Mana Suzukura’s own fears for her safety and sanity.

Two questions hang –

Is Mana free from the stalker Hodaka, who still remains fixated on her?

Is Mana safe with her murdered husband Kazuki seemingly returning from the grave?

Written in a style that poses even more alarming questions as Mana’s predicament unravels. Her abusive childhood is revealed and how she fled her alcoholic mother. Anonymous letters arrive at Mana’s apartment indicating that someone knows about her past. But can she trust Kazuki, the man who claims to be her husband stating that he’s suffering from amnesia [allegedly caused by injuries he suffered five years ago].

Mana revisits her past after she fled the horrors of an abusive childhood and drifted into what she terms a dishonourable profession, one she shared with her friend Nene who taught her about fabrics and fashion. With Nene’s help she escaped the dishonourable profession, even managing the breakup from a short relationship with Tadahito Mase, a student from a good family.

Mana fears for both her safety and sanity living with her amnesiac husband Kazuki. Despite her husband’s former abusive and violent nature – he has no recollection of the past, though he retains an aura of mystery with occasional bouts of peculiar behaviour.

Matters come to a head, when Police Inspector Nishigaki and Detective Iwamto contact her and ask her to come to Sendai Police station, as the [badly decomposed] bones of a man [identified by DNA and Dental records] as Kazuki Suzukura [her husband] have been discovered at the bottom of a deserted ravine.

The most pressing question that puzzles the two Detectives is ‘why Mana didn’t report her husband missing before leaving Sendai prefecture to settle in Tokyo?’

Then the novel focuses on identity, escape and the motivations of the desperate in a rigidly controlled society.

The Murdered Husband Returns is an unusual crime novel, though not entirely successful in terms of its execution, but it remains captivating in its attempt to understand how fleeing the horrors of a past can alter the future – crucially if the journey is worth the cost and who we may become.

Translated by Jordan Taylor