Set in 1958 this tightly plotted, precise and polished mystery/detective story is very set in its time. Tokyo Express by Seichō Matsumoto, translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood, is a masterwork of minimalist craftsmanship. No detail is extraneous. No scene could be cut. The setting starts as a thriller more than a murder mystery, but turns into a murder mystery a few chapters in.
This is a novel of timetables and alibis, politics and very realistic oftentimes tedious and frustrating detective work. While “Tokyo Express” has a general air of melancholy about it, it shows more empathy to its detectives than to its murder victims. The result feels a bit like a Japanese take on noir fiction, with a more minimalist take on the genre. It’s not that you dislike the victims (as is common in Golden Age detective novels), it’s that you are kept at the same distance from them as the detectives have.
This is also not the “amateur sleuth saves the day in the face of stupid detectives” type of novel. The detectives are thorough, thoughtful, methodical, not easily fooled. They use no flashy techniques, no DNA, no modern day CSI methods. It’s the old fashioned repeated, grey work of questioning people, trying to get timetables sorted out, working in small steps that the reader is always privy too (no Sherlock Holmes-like jumps made by omitting key points in the narrative).
There is nothing flashy in “Tokyo Express”. There is superb craftsmanship and a very noir novel that is well set in its time and place. I enjoyed reading it and I particularly liked the addition of maps and timetables to the book. Even if detective novels aren’t your usual fare, I’d give “Tokyo Express” a read, as it’s not the usual “whodunnit” fare.
