Yoshitaka had always been quite clear with his wife, Ayane. From the beginning he had told her that he wanted to have children but since it was clear now that she could not have any, he told her that he wanted out of their marriage. He assured her that he still loved her but she just didn’t fit into his life plan anymore. He said that he would make sure she did not suffer financially but it was now time for them to both move on with their lives-separately.  Ayane knew that this was and had been his position all along but she had hoped that Yoshitaka might change his mind and that he might come to value their life together as much as she had.

He had told her this right before their guests arrived at their home for a dinner party they were hosting and she suspected that he had chosen that time carefully to avoid any possibility of an emotional scene. Luckily, she had planned to leave the following day to visit her parents in Sapporo for the long weekend and that would give her the time she needed to think about her life and her future.

But the next evening while she is with her parents, she gets a call from the police saying that her husband’s body had been found in their home lying in a pool of coffee. The circumstances are considered suspicious and they request that she come back to Tokyo to be interviewed by the police.

The police of course, always suspect the spouse, but Detective Kusanagi can’t quite believe that Ayane did this to her husband. His partner Kaoru Utsumi, however is not as easily distracted by Ayane’s demure demeanor and her feminine intuition is telling her that Ayane is not guiltless as she claims to be, especially when they find that Ayane’s assistant has been having an affair with Yoshitaka and is pregnant. With the results of the autopsy showing that arsenic was the cause of death, Kusanagi and Utsumi focus their attention on the methods by which arsenic could have been introduced into the coffee that Yoshitaka drank. Carefully they test out all their possible leads and theories but come up with nothing. In desperation, Utsumi finally calls on Professor Galileo, who had helped them previously. to get a new perspective. As Professor Galileo reviews the scene of the crime and the facts once again they finally begin begin to see the patience and the diabolical planning that made this almost “a perfect murder!”

This is a “whodunit” of the first order!  Fun to read, cleverly plotted and with a surprising ending, it has all the things you want in a good mystery and the fact that it is set in Japan just makes it all the more interesting!

Brenda’s Rating: ****(4 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Sharon and Marian

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