A Quiet Place by Seichō Matsumoto

First published in Japan in 1975; published in translation by Random House/Modern Library on July 14, 2026

Seichō Matsumoto began writing crime fiction in the late 1940s. He is best known as the author of Tokyo Express. He died in 1992.

A Quiet Place exemplifies the quiet storytelling of classic crime fiction. Modern Japanese mystery writers seem to have maintained that tradition, while modern American crime novels are usually driven by action, violence, and pace. Readers have their preferences, but I suspect that many fans of crime fiction consider both approaches to have their merits.

The protagonist of A Quiet Place is Tsuneo Asai, a career civil servant who lives and works in Tokyo. He is “immensely proud of being section chief at the Ministry of Agriculture.” Asai is particularly knowledgeable about meat products and is often asked to lecture or participate in workshops at farming villages and gatherings of meat producers.

Asai is on a business trip in Kobe, assisting the new director general of his ministry, when he learns that his wife has died. A caller tells him that Eiko died from a heart attack in the Sanya district of Yoyogi. Asai knew that Eiko had a weak heart but is surprised by her death because she took care to avoid overstimulation.

Asai makes his apologies and rushes back to Tokyo. He learns that Eiko collapsed outside a cosmetics boutique. The shopkeeper, Chiyoko Takahashi, summoned a nearby doctor, but Eiko died before the doctor arrived. The time of death was furnished by Takahashi, but Asai later suspects that her account of events was not accurate.

Asai is puzzled by the details of Eiko’s death. What was Eiko doing in the Yoyogi neighborhood? She did not work, but she often went out during the day to pursue a hobby — most recently, to gain inspiration for her poetry and to meet with other haiku enthusiasts. Did some local attraction draw her to this particular area?

Matsumoto develops Asai’s character in depth, including his impressions of Eiko. Because of her heart condition — or because Asai spends most of his waking moments thinking about his career — Asai and Eiko rarely had sex. Asai had gotten used to abstinence and assumed that Eiko simply lacked sexual interest in him. He now recalls the time Eiko asked him if she was sexy, a question supposedly inspired by a girlfriend who told her that a new outfit made her look appealing. Asai realized for the first time that Eiko was sexy but it didn’t occur to him that she might return another man’s interest.

It’s telling that Asai discovers so much about his wife after her death. Because he was so devoted to his work and shared few interests with her, he didn’t realize that she was acclaimed in the local haiku community for the elegance of her poems. He had no idea that so many people valued her for her kindness. He barely noticed her and was unaware that others admired her feminine appearance. The story might be seen as a cautionary tale for men who are so wrapped up in their careers that they take their wives for granted.

Asai decides to visit the location of Eiko’s death, in part to satisfy his curiosity, but also to thank Takahashi for helping his wife. He is surprised that the shop is on a hill since Eiko usually avoided walking uphill. Asai interrogates the shopkeeper and the doctor, then wanders through the neighborhood before he spots two nearby love hotels. He begins to wonder whether Eiko was meeting another man. To investigate that suspicion, Asai shows Eiko’s picture to maids at the love hotels, but none of them recognize her as a guest.

Asai's suspicions grow when, months later, a new love hotel appears at the site formerly occupied by the cosmetics shop. Asai hires an investigator who provides details of the hotel's ownership. The details allow Asai to hypothesize a complex chain of events surrounding Eiko's death.

For much of the novel, it isn’t clear why this is a crime novel. Eiko seems to have suffered a natural death, even if her location and behavior on the date of her death seems suspicious. Only after Asai finally stumbles upon the truth does a crime occur. I’ll leave it to the reader to discover the nature of that crime and its impact on Asai.

A Quiet Place tells a quiet story, but its gentle nature — at least until a violent moment occurs near the end — does not deprive the story of its dramatic tension. I admired Matsumoto’s ability to transform a boring character — a man whose life is devoted to statistics and government regulations — into a husband who is tormented, first by the mystery of his wife’s death and later by the crime that eventually occurs.

The story is blurbed as a psychological thriller, and while it doesn’t feature the action that characterizes modern thrillers, the psychological impact of events on Asai’s life makes it possible for the reader to empathize with his plight, or at least to pity him for his faults. Japanese crime fiction that makes it into an English translation is almost always worth reading, and A Quiet Place is a quiet example of crime fiction that avoids formulaic storytelling by focusing on human responses to unexpected events.

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The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey

Published by Orbit on April 14, 2026

The Faith of Beasts is the second novel in The Captive’s War series, following The Mercy of Gods. The first novel detailed the capture of humans from a planet called Anjiin. The humans are tasked with making themselves useful to their captors, the Carryx. If the humans cannot prove themselves useful, the Carryx will likely end human existence — at least, the existence of humans from Anjiin. 

The most useful humans tend to be scientists who can help the Carryx solve problems, such as creating food that will provide nutrition to other captive species. The humans also need to figure out how to reproduce more efficiently than the standard method, because a “moiety that cannot sustain its own population is not useful and will be culled.” Whether the humans should be complicit in “birthing new slaves for the Carryx” is one of several moral dilemmas the characters debate as they struggle for survival and the hope of freedom.

The Carryx follow the leadership of their Sovran, but they cannot be defeated by chopping off their organizational head because a Sovran, unlike a queen bee, is easily replaced by another Sovran. In fact, Sovrans only last a few years before one of their daughters challenges them to a battle for supremacy. One such challenge erupts during The Faith of Beasts, contributing both to human knowledge of the Carryx and despair that they seem so invulnerable.

When The Mercy of Gods ended, a few characters were plotting to fight back against the Carryx, because humans are badass and that’s what they do. Dafyd Alkhor and Jellit Kaul exposed a foolish group of rebellious conspirators to protect the larger group of humans and their (presumably more intelligent) clandestine efforts to continue the fight. Whether sacrificing a few for the good of the many was the right thing to do is one of the complex moral questions that the first two novels tackle.

Sometimes groups of humans are sent to other worlds on various missions in service of the Carryx. Jessyn Kaul and Garral Pär, while on one such mission, encounter beings who appear to be humans, although their origins are a mystery. Jessyn and Garral hope to use their knowledge of the other humans as a means of attacking the Carryx.

The first novel introduced aliens known as the swarm. They incorporate individuals into their collective, taking whatever shape they please. The swarm devours/incorporates some human characters who were introduced in the first novel,. We learn that the “swarm is a weapon of war. A spy sent to collect everything and transmit what it learns back to worlds it has never known.”

So the swarm count as good guys, even though they effectively murder individuals to gain access to their knowledge and talents. This sets up an interesting love-hate relationship between Daffyd and the swarm because the swarm killed/absorbed his lover. Should Daffyd have sex with the swarm if it takes the shape of his former lover? Ick. Overlaying the complexities of human emotions onto interactions with aliens has been a strength of the writers who use the collective pen name James S.A. Corey.

In addition to the humans led by Daffyd who plot against the Carryx, the side plot against the Carryx instigated by Jessyn and Garral, and the spying in which the swarm engage, the most formidable threat to the Carryx may be the beings known to the Carryx as the deathless enemy. They are an “enemy that hated the Carryx and fought against them on thousands of worlds.” Corey offers some hints as to the nature of the deathless enemy, but there is still much to be revealed. The Carryx want the humans to help them understand and defeat the deathless enemy, while the humans want to join forces with them to defeat the Carryx.

The Faith of Beasts moves the larger story forward, but there is a lot to unpack. Fortunately, occasional battles, clandestine acts of daring, and conflicts among human characters keep the story in motion. Still, holding all this information in the reader’s head may be challenging, particularly if the interval between each novel continues to be two years. The novels are lengthy and a reader may need to take notes to keep track of characters and events. Corey does a bit of internal summarizing so it isn't necessary to reread the first novel before tackling the second (although I might have been less confused had I done so).

The Faith of Beasts feels like it is continuing to lay a foundation for the larger story. The series was announced as a trilogy (with some novellas or short stories as filler), but the final book will need to be mammoth to bring everything together. I nevertheless look forward to reading it, because the Corey writing team produces some of the most inventive and enjoyable space opera in modern science fiction.

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Icarus 17 by Charles Cumming

Published by The Mysterious Press on July 7, 2026

In the fourth novel of Charles Cummings’ BOX 88 series, Lachlan Kite’s past catches up with him. Just before Martha Raine’s wedding in 2001, he had a last fling with her. The sex must have been good because Kite proposed to her the next morning, asking her to call off her wedding. But Martha knew that Kite was married to his job and would never give her the full and undivided attention she craved, so Kite and Martha went their separate ways.

Martha had a son and daughter before getting divorced in 2022. Meanwhile, Kite married a woman who was more tolerant of his need to divide his attention between his job and his family. Sadly for him, Kite’s wife is getting a bit weary of his insistence that saving the world from tyrants and terrorists is a worthier use of his time than hanging out with her. Such is life.

The story begins in 2018, when Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. His killers later torture and murder Marc Chevalier because they believed he would expose kickbacks in the construction of NEOM, the city-of-the-future brainchild of Saudi Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Back in the present, Kite is meeting Martha for dinner in London at her request when he learns that a shooter has killed people near his home in Sweden. Kite rushes back home, where he offers to retire so he can stay home and keep his family safe. His wife knows that retirement is not in the cards.

Martha reappears in Kite’s life when her son Max disappears. Kite uses his position at BOX 88 (a hybrid, off-the-books intelligence agency that combines resources of the US and UK) to search for Max. He discovers that Max has disappeared with his girlfriend, Yasmine, who seems to be using a fake identity. The reader, like Kite and Max, will wonder who she might really be. The answer is surprising.

Much of the novel follows Max and Yasmine as they flee from two competing teams of people who want to capture or kill Yasmine. In true thriller fashion, the young lovers stay a step ahead of the pursuit. In due course, Max and the reader learn why Yasmine is on the run. Hint: it has something to do with the death of Chevalier.

The rest of the novel follows Kite and Martha, who are a step behind Max and Yasmine. Their journey begins in Greece and moves to Albania before a final confrontation occurs in Sarajevo. Charles Cumming adds enough local color in each location to give the story a strong sense of atmosphere.

Yasmine’s predicament is unlikely but not nearly as implausible as the plots of most modern thrillers. The technology and tradecraft Kite uses to track down Yasmine and Max is fun. Kite’s characterization gains some depth, thanks to the tension caused by his competing relationships with his wife and Martha. The story moves with the pace of a thriller, placing Max and Yasmine in danger and giving Kite ample cause for worry about their fate.

The story gives a nod to current events, including an astute analysis (from a British perspective) of the American Right and its reaction to Obama (“Because of Obama you get Breitbart and the odious Bannon, as well as the attendant horrors of Fox News, Hannity, Tucker Carlson and so on. From there it is a very short journey indeed to Donald J. Trump.”). Apart from occasional commentary, the story is not overtly political, so open-minded espionage fans on both sides of the divide should be able to enjoy it. The story is complete and can be read as a standalone, but a teaser at the end will give series fans a reason to await the next installment.

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The Delivery by Gregg Hurwitz

Published by Thomas & Mercer on July 1, 2026

The Delivery is a modern version of the “robot gone bad” story. Modern because the mechanical robot of old has been replaced with a biological creature grown in a pod and given access to its owner’s entire digital life. From social media, text messages, emails, household appliances, and other “smart” technology the creature learns everything about its owner, the better to serve its needs.

Gregg Hurwitz does little to explain how this is accomplished. We know only that a pod is delivered and activated. After a time, a red light turns green and the creature steps out, showers off the goo in which it was brewed, and gets to work. It has gray skin, no hair, an average build, and generic male features (“well endowed but not grotesquely so”). The creature is programmed to solve the owner’s problems. It cooks, cleans, and does the shopping (while clad in sunglasses and a hat, which apparently hides its gray skin).

Hurwitz’s failure even to attempt a scientific explanation of the creature’s manufacturing process proves that he is better writer of thrillers than science fiction. It is difficult for a reader to suspend disbelief when a writer doesn’t offer a plausible scientific explanation for his central plot point.

Mark is one of three chief product officers for an “e-news content optimization company.” Mark is very well paid but his boss, unsurprisingly for a tech bro, wants Mark to devote his entire life to the company. Work demands can be difficult for Mark because he has a child on the spectrum. Maddy is a handful. Kids at school bully her, to the dismay of Rebecca, her mother. Rebecca doesn’t work outside the home but feels overwhelmed by housework and taking care of Maddy. Rebecca volunteers for the “kiss and ride drop off” at Maddy’s school, which adds to her stress.

Mark’s boss offers an unspecified solution to their family problems. He gives Mark a titanium business card for NORM LLC, started by “a South African technocrat.” We know who that is, right? Stamped into the back of the card is YOU’RE IN CHARGE. Mark’s boss doesn’t explain what that means, but tells Mark that the company makes a device, currently in beta testing that will “see to everything you really want. In your darkest heart of hearts.”

Mark is swimming in money so he plops down $225,000 and a few months later, the pod is delivered to his door. After a time, the gray man pops out, then politely cleans up the goo he tracks into the shower. Maddy names him Mr. Man.

Rebecca is delighted to wake up and smell the coffee that Mr. Man has brewed. All her problems seem to have been solved by the addition of Mr. Man — except for the irritating neighbor who makes daily complaints about the sap that the Higgins’ pine tree deposits on his roof.

The “robot gone bad” theme begins soon after Mr. Man’s arrival. It never occurs to Mark or Rebecca to give Mr. Man a simple instruction — don’t kill or harm any person or animal — even after they begin to suspect that Mr. Man is helping them by eliminating people who make them unhappy. Nor does it seem to occur to them that unplugging the charging pod would solve their problem.

I didn’t buy that a call to customer service was met with a threat to blackmail the family (the company enforces its “no return” policy by reminding Mark that Mr. Man knows everything there is to know about him). Why this deterred Mark is beyond me. In any event, concealing the fact that a product might go on a murder rampage hardly seems like a smart tactic for a company that plans to launch an IPO in the near future. I just don’t think Hurwitz thought through the details of story. Perhaps he regarded the technical details as unimportant, but to science fiction fans, verisimilitude matters.

The story’s moral is encapsulated in Rebecca’s thought “that humanity has reached the end of an era, that more and more of our work is being done for us, that we can outsource and push-button and delegate our tasks and needs until everything exists outside of us. Until we are hollow.” Living like the Amish might be spiritually satisfying but frankly, if a pod creature will clean the gutters for me, I’m willing to accept whatever degree of hollowness that delegation of manual labor to technology might cause.

A secondary moral is that we can’t trust corporations to act in our best interests. Well duh.

Both the novel’s moral points are worthy lessons to learn, but I’m not convinced that The Delivery teaches them effectively. The story is a bit dull, the characters are not particularly interesting, and the plot fails to generate tension. While the story held my interest, the ending is too easy and entirely too predictable. Hurwitz has done some good work in the thriller genre, but if The Delivery is any indication, science fiction is not his forte.

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Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Tor Books on June 23, 2026

Talking animals are normally the stuff of fantasy or fables, often pitched to children, with such notable exceptions as Animal Farm and Watership Down. Adrian Tchaikovsky found a way for science fiction noir to tell a talking animal story.

The animals in Green City Wars are genetically engineered. Bioengineered modifications include voice boxes to enable speech and fingers to enable work. A drug called Plangent boosts their intelligence, but it needs to be replenished now and then to keep the animals from reverting to their normal state. Animals work in exchange for Plangent and for buttons used as currency.

Normal instincts have been overridden by programming that replaces the desire to eat members of other species with a moral code that includes service to humanity. Humans think of servant animals as Little Helpers but the animals stay out of sight because humans find it disturbing to see them. A rat might be a Little Helper but nobody wants to see one working as a busboy.

Given sufficient Plangent, most animals are at least as bright as a dull human but an important mouse in the story is a true genius. Most animals speak rudimentary languages that have been created to suit them, although birds often speak several languages, birds being good at making and imitating sounds. Some animals worship a human deity named Jeff.

Tchaikovsky devoted an impressive amount of world building to the creation of Green City Wars. The world is a future Earth. After people came to their senses about the climate crisis, they remodeled the world to make it green. Cities are now integrated into forests and powered by solar energy. Towers that house homes and businesses are covered in bark and vines. And hidden away, animals do all the hard work, leaving humans to pursue their leisure activities.

The animals live in the roots beneath the cities or underground, briefly popping into human space to clean the streets at night or clear restaurant tables after diners finish their meals. Underground animals process waste, handle the sewage system, and keep the electrical grid working.

Rule One, understood by every animal, is Don’t Bother the Humans. Don’t even be noticed by them. Stay in your place, do your job, and you’ll both earn Plangent and be fed for your natural lifetime, which is rather brief in the case of mice and rats.

Unbeknownst to humans, who can skate by without working if they choose, the animals that replaced them as laborers have developed their own economy, complete with the equivalent of labor unions and mob bosses. Red squirrels are at war with gray squirrels, but it’s a hidden war to accommodate Rule One. Animals operate the farms and divert produce to their own markets when it doesn’t meet human standards. They sell table scraps. Smart animals have learned how to hack their internal software so they can enjoy coffee.

The world Tchaikovsky built is so entertaining that it doesn’t require much of a story, but the noir plot does not disappoint. The protagonist is a raccoon named Scotch. His genetic engineering might add extra years to his lifespan, but he doubts that he will live to be a wise old raccoon, given the messes he’s made. He got tired of the corporate life Uzco offered him as a trash gatherer and wiring repairer (“dexterous little hands” help him with the latter job) — a life that included ready access to Plangent — so he became a freelancer, a combination of private detective and fixer. He’s always hustling to avoid running out of Plangent and returning to beast status. But like any good detective/fixer, he’s adept at making connections and doing favors that he can later ask to be repaid.

Scotch’s supply of Plangent is running low when Benson, a large turtle who manages Uzco, offers him a return to work, complete with a promised supply of Plangent. The task will require him to work undercover. He is to find and bring to Benson a mouse named Dr. Meece. Benson doesn’t tell Skotch why he wants the mouse and, at least initially, Skotch doesn’t really care. The remuneration seems quite generous for a task that seems quite simple. Benson gives Scotch a sample of the mouse’s scent and off he goes.

The story places Scotch in conflict with other factions that also want Meece for reasons that Scotch learns only late in the story. It soon becomes apparent to Scotch that Meece is a super-genius who has invented something that will change the lives of animals forever — whether for better or worse, Scotch doesn’t know. He only knows that some animal factions want him dead and others want his dream to be realized. The factions include corporatists, anarchists, guilds, and religious sects.

Two assassins who want to terminate Meese are a stoatweasel named Szerky and a cat named Tybelle. The cat is actually a human’s pet and thus enjoys a protected status — or at least it wants to leave that impression. Scotch battles them both (he’s bigger than the cat but not nearly as fast) and finds himself warring at various times with both the gray and red squirrels. A few animals are on his side, particularly a pigeon named Uwe who also has a protected status as an informant to a human master. A possum named Maria might or might not be on his side.

Tchaikovsky gives his animal characters personalities that are consistent with their species. Scotch the raccoon has a reputation as a bandit but is well served by his cleverness. The pigeon is annoyingly loud and boisterous. A frog works in water reclamation, moles work underground, and so forth.

In an indirect way, much like Animal Farm, Green City Wars uses animals to indict an oppressive economic system — in this case, an allegorical indictment of unfettered capitalism. To explain why that’s true would require revealing Meese’s secret, but it is enough to know that Tchaikovsky put careful thought into the economic ramifications of a system based on the fear of losing Plangent if animals stop serving the needs of their bosses.

The economic allegory gives the story some weight, but it is at bottom an amusing story of talking animals. Tchaikovsky is amazingly prolific — he’s the modern version of Isaac Asimov in that regard — but he always finds a way to give a fresh spin to conventional ideas. Readers won’t need to be science fiction fans to enjoy Green City Wars — a love of animals, lively plots, or both will be enough.

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