This is one of the books mentioned in the introduction of The Decagon House Murders, so I was really happy to see that my library had an e-copy of it!

The Tattoo Murder Case takes place in post-WWII Japan. Kenzo Matsushita, a young doctor, is at a tattoo competition where he meets and instantly falls in love with the entrancing and heavily tattoo-ed Kinue. While going to meet her for a second tryst, he finds her dead body – sans Torso. Since Kenzo’s brother is the Daiyu Matsushita, the Detective Chief Inspector, he ends up being able to follow the investigation (and the resulting murders) as a not-suspect but not quite investigator.

So when I started on this book, I thought that Kenzo was going to be the detective in this story. But soon after the investigation begins, it’s quite clear that Kenzo doesn’t have what it takes (ah, dear naive Kenzo). He definitely tries his best, but the true detective of this story is his old friend, Kyosuke Kamizu, who appears in the latter half of the novel like Miss Marple to solve the mystery. Basically, we get half the book for set up, and then half the book (or perhaps a little less than half) for Kyosuke to solve the mystery.

While there is a brilliant detective and a clever mystery in this book, the star of the book is actually the art of Japanese tattoos. Kenzo is bewitched by Kinue’s tattoos and he’s not the only one – at the start of the book, we’re introduced to a “Dr Tattoo” who goes around buying people’s tattoos, so that he can harvest the skins after they die! It’s definitely an obsession for many of them, and I quite enjoyed the introductory section of the book that explored this obsession and subculture.

As for characters, I liked most of them! Sure, Kenzo was a little annoying at times because he seemed to be even more oblivious than me (I managed to predict one twist, so I feel pretty proud of myself), but his brother is pretty sharp and I enjoyed their brotherly interactions. Kyosuke was also an interesting person – for some reason, he reminds me of Mitarai Kiyoshi (from Shimada Soji’s mysteries). Actually now that I’ve made that connection, I can also see that Kenzo resemble’s Mitarai’s sidekick, Ishioka Kazumi.

Quite obviously, I really enjoyed this mystery! It’s a little dark, but you should definitely pick it up if you’re a fan of The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, or just a fan of Japanese mysteries in general.

Featured Image: Photo from Canva