A Quiet Place

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

"Seicho Matsumoto combines the prolific output of a Rex Stout with the literary qualities of Elmore Leonard.""San Francisco Chronicle "

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 How did it come about that his wifewho was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetingsended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood?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 Matsumoto was 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 as "Inspector Imanishi Investigates "in 1989, sold over four million copies and became a movie box-office hit."