Suspicion by Seichō Matsumoto

First published in Japan in 1982; published in translation by Random House/Modern Library on March 3, 2006

I’m a sucker for stories about a criminal defendant who is widely viewed as guilty based on strong but circumstantial evidence until a crafty defense attorney unmasks the true culprit. Suspicion departs from the usual formula by omitting the trial and adds a twist with a journalist whose self-preservation requires the defendant to be convicted.

Moichi Akitani is a reporter at the Hokuriku Daily. He is visiting a relative in a hospital when he stumbles upon Masao Harayama, a criminal defense lawyer who has a bad liver. Harayama is defending Kumako Onizuka on a charge of murdering her husband, Fukutarō Shirakawa.

As they chat about the case, the reader learns that the circumstantial evidence against Onizuka is strong. A witness reported seeing her drive a car at a high speed before it left the road and plunged into the sea. Onizuka claims that her husband was driving and hoped to kill them both, but says she escaped through the shattered windshield and swam to safety while her husband drowned. Onizuka’s credibility is damaged by evidence that she took out several large insurance policies on her husband’s life shortly before he died, not to mention her contradiction of eyewitness testimony.

Akitani wrote a series of blistering stories about Onizuka, exposing her history of greed and bad behavior with men and her ties to the yakuza. He’s sure of Onizuka’s guilt, but he worries that she will send gangsters to exact revenge against him and his family if she is acquitted.

Harayama wants to pass the case along to another lawyer because he has become too old and ill to conclude it. The court eventually appoints a civil lawyer, Takukichi Sahara, to handle the case. This pleases Akitani because he expects the inexperienced Sahara to fumble it.

The story’s hook involves a wrench and a shoe that were found in the car. Characters float theories about why the wrench wasn’t in the trunk and why only one of Shirakawa’s feet lost a shoe in the crash.

Sahara comes up with a plausible but far-fetched theory that solves the mystery. I didn’t think the theory was convincing and I’m confident that no American judge or jury would buy it, but perhaps Japanese judges are more open to unlikely theories of innocence.

The more interesting aspect of the story lies in the journalist’s fear of an acquittal. The novel sends a strong message about the danger of journalists assuming a defendant’s guilt — a sin that American journalists regularly commit. Akitani confesses that journalists are manipulated by sources from the police or a prosecutor’s office who provide (and spin) inside information. While the journalists are aware that they are being used, they report the tips from the government’s perspective for fear that if they don’t, they will lose their sources.

The story’s ending is meant to be surprising, although it is foreshadowed by earlier events and probably won’t shock most readers. The plot is less than gripping and is marred by redundant reviews of the evidence. The redundancies stretch a longish short story into a novella, which may have been their intended purpose. The reader doesn’t need internal summaries in such a short book. While Suspicion has just enough twists to merit a tepid recommendation, it lacks the clever plot and quirky characters that I have come to enjoy in Japanese mysteries.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Politician by Tim Sullivan

First published in Great Britain in 2022; published by Grove Atlantic on March 3, 2026

The Politician is the fourth novel to chronicle the work of Detective Sargeant George Cross. They are being newly released to the American market, having originally been published in Great Britain. I send my gratitude to Atlantic Crime for introducing Cross to American readers.

Peggy Frampton was an “agony aunt.” I was unfamiliar with the phrase before reading The Politician, but it seems to be the social media version of an advice columnist. Peggy had an online following of five million. Before Peggy started dispensing advice on the internet, she was the mayor of Bristol.

Peggy’s body is found in her home. While it initially appears that she died from a blow to the head, an autopsy suggests a different cause. A search of her locked safe reveals that jewelry is missing. DCI Ben Carson, the lazy detective Cross disdains, immediately concludes that Peggy interrupted a robbery, but Cross is never content with the easy answer.

Peggy’s husband, Luke Frampton, is a relatively successful criminal barrister. He has never been elevated to the status of Queen’s Counsel, supposedly because he views the title as elitist. Cross suspects he has some other reason not to improve his professional status.

Peggy was a friend of the Chief, so he assembles a large team to find her killer. Fortunately for Cross, he assigns Chief Superintendent Heather Matthews as the senior investigator. He assures the other officers that his choice is in no way a reflection on Carson. “Which of course made everyone in the room immediately think it was exactly that.”

Internet trolls made nasty comments on Peggy’s site, so staffer and series regular Alice Mackenzie is assigned to review them. The police would like to get some help from Peggy’s long-time assistant, Janette Coombes, but she is “travelling through the Golden Triangle in South-East Asia” and only talks to her husband Mark about once a month (her choice, Mark reports with some sadness).

One suspect is Michael Ribble, who asked Peggy for advice about proposing to his girlfriend and blamed her when she rejected him. Luke is a suspect because he regularly cheated on Peggy and husbands are always suspects. He has been dating Agnesha Dragusha, a much younger woman whose father, Luke’s former client, is the head of an Albanian crime family who manages the family business from prison.

A different branch of the investigation involves Peggy’s social activism. She had opposed a housing plan because the developer would not satisfy her demand for affordable housing. The developer, Adam Chapel, seems like a decent man, but his pursuit of money over morality cost him his friendship with his founding partner. His new second-in-command, Clive Bland, strikes Cross as a sketchier businessman.

As always, Tim Sullivan tells a story that is rich with detail. I appreciate the way Sullivan shares clues with the reader as Cross discovers them, giving a clever reader an opportunity to solve the mystery before the truth is revealed. I managed to guess (rather than deduce) part of the reveal, but some clues slipped past me. It is fun to watch Cross weave them all together as he interrogates the suspect and provokes an inevitable confession. As always, Cross chases down every clue and refuses to make assumptions. Unless every puzzle piece fits perfectly, he isn’t satisfied.

As Cross and Ottey travel around the English countryside interviewing suspects, atmospheric descriptions of buildings and gardens give this (and the other Cross novels) a strong sense of place. Character development continues, with a focus on Cross’ relationship with his father. Cross finally learns the truth behind his mother’s decision to abandon him in his childhood (or so it seemed to him), a decision he always attributed to her inability to cope with his autistic behavior. I’m a little slow, but the explanation finally dawned on me after Sullivan offered a clue about three-quarters of the way into the novel. Savvier readers might clock the truth more quickly. The explanation for his mother’s mysterious disappearance makes perfect sense.

Mystery fans will do themselves a favor by treating the George Cross novels as essential reading. The Politician is my favorite of the series so far, not because the mystery is clever — they’re always clever — but because of the touching way Cross’ character evolves as he processes new information about his parents’ relationship.

RECOMMENDED

Untouchable by Jeffery Deaver

Published by Amazon Original Stories on February 17, 2026

I’m not a fan of Deaver’s Constant Marlowe stories, largely because Marlowe is the kind of self-righteous character who thinks she’s entitled to bully people. Marlowe is a special agent with the Illinois Department of Criminal Investigations. She starts Untouchable by detaining a man she doesn’t know because a young woman began to cry after he spoke to her. That hardly seems like evidence of a crime, given that the man walked past the woman on the sidewalk without speaking to her. The woman stopped and shouted an obscenity at him while screaming “Are you the one?” She only cried after he said something in response that Marlowe didn’t hear. Where is the crime? Why does Marlowe think she has the right to accost the man and demand his ID?

Marlowe believes her suspicions are founded because she sees “fear” in the woman’s eyes, notwithstanding the woman’s insistence that she doesn’t need help. Marlow believes she has a spidey sense that is triggered by women's hidden pain so she decides to meddle. Like too many crime novel heroines, Marlowe considers herself an avenging angel for abused women, but that doesn’t give her the right to abuse her authority as a law enforcement officer. And when Deaver tells us that “Constant Marlowe believed that rules were more suggestions than anything,” I have to wonder why a bully with a badge who disrespects the law is anyone a crime fiction fan would regard as a hero.

Jeffery Deaver could have used this novella to explore Marlowe’s sense of entitlement or her willingness to violate the civil rights of men in her quest to protect women. Instead, like most writers who glorify “tough guy” cops of either gender, he appears to believe that readers should admire a character who routinely betrays her oath to uphold the Constitution.

Marlowe carries a locked bag so that, when a suspect doesn’t conform to her behavioral standards, she can lock up her gun and challenge him to a fight. Cops should be fired when they start fights, even if they believe the men they beat up “deserve it.” But when Marlowe hands her locked weapon to a stranger to hold for her — someone who might make off with her firearm while she’s busy fighting — I have to wonder why anyone would believe she should be allowed to carry a badge.

Regardless of my reservations about Marlowe, I am always prepared to be entertained by a good story. Untouchable falls short. Marlowe is doing something in Prescott, Illinois, home to fictional Hamline University, when she sees the encounter between Kathleen Delaine (the crying woman) and the unfortunate man who leered at her.

Marlowe learns that Delaine wrote a letter to the local newspaper suggesting that Hamline’s football program should pay more attention to concussions and the lasting brain damage they can cause. She is unfairly blamed on social media for destroying the football program as vengeance for being dumped by a football player. Someone posts a photo of Delaine sleeping on the team bus and accuses her of shagging the entire team.

A Manosphere podcaster picks up the story and Delaine begins to receive nasty emails suggesting all the sexual fantasies the emailers would like to act out with her. When she shouted “Are you the one?” she was asking whether he sent the emails. She shouts the same question to every guy who gives her a knowing smile.

The plot addresses Marlowe’s effort to identify the “stalker” emailer, a quest that has her confronting the podcaster. None of this is particularly interesting. Neither are lectures about chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the various bullet calibers that start with .3 (.308, .32, etc.) and Marlowe’s career as a boxer.

Any interest the story might have generated is diminished by its preachy nature. While I broadly agree with its message that the Manosphere is doing the country no favors, I don’t enjoy heavy-handed lectures about the evils of social media delivered by psychopathic characters who would themselves benefit from a good lecture about appropriate behavior.

The story goes off the rails with the armed confrontation of a suspected stalker. That incident leads to a silly explanation for the stalking. Without spoiling anything, I’ll simply suggest that the bad guy’s motivation isn’t within spitting distance of being credible. Even if I had enjoyed the rest of the story, the attempt to reimagine the stalking as a component of a deeper and unrelated crime would have been sufficient reason not to recommend Untouchable.

NOT RECOMMENDED

The Crossroads by C.J. Box

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on February 24, 2026

Allegations of corruption in Wyoming politics have been in the news lately. Political corruption may help explain why The Crossroads opens with the discovery of Joe Pickett’s bullet-ridden body in his SUV on a road that branches off to three different ranches. Or maybe the shooters had a grudge against Joe for other reasons.

A hunter phoned the police to report the shooting but had to flee from the scene when the shooters made him their target. Joe is still alive (barely) when the sheriff and Joe’s wife arrive on the scene. He’s flown to a hospital in Billings where a neurosurgeon will deal with the bullet that entered his head.

Joe is in a coma during most of the novel. Joe’s daughters carry the story, with series regular Nate Romanowski making an occasional appearance. Since Nate is a psychopath masquerading as a libertarian hero, I was pleased that he played only a limited role.

The three daughters — Sheridan (27), April (25), and Lucy (23) — converge on the family home as they await news of their father. The story follows the daughters as they investigate the shooting. They theorize that their father was driving to one of the three ranches. The McElwee sisters are fiercely protective of their privacy. Wild animals seem to get drunk when they visit the McElwee ranch. Michael Thompson, the wealthy owner of the Double Diamond, is involved in a secret project on his land, one that may require political influence (and Joe's help) to bring to fruition. John and Shelby Bucholz occupy the third ranch and seem to be hiding someone in a dilapidated cabin. Adding to the mystery is a helicopter that repeatedly flies over the ranches.

Joe’s daughters split up to interview the three ranch families. Each daughter forms the impression that the rancher she interrogated may be committing crimes that Joe was investigating. The daughters weave elaborate theories to tie each rancher to the shooting. The reader’s job is to decide which rancher hired the shooters.

The two dolts who shot Joe are featured in a few short chapters. Their appearances prove that trigger pulls are not fueled by brainpower. Fortunately, the shooters don’t spoil the mystery by revealing the mastermind behind the assassination attempt.

Occasional flashbacks show the reader what Joe was doing in the days before the shooting. Moving the spotlight away from Joe isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because Joe is the strong silent type with an emphasis on silent. If he can hold up his end of a conversation by saying “yup” and looking down, that’s what he’ll do. Joe’s personality might be described as stalwart, but that would just be a nicer way of saying that Joe is a boring guy. When C.J. Box writes a Joe Pickens novel that entertains, the entertainment comes from the plot or surrounding characters, not so much from Joe.

I appreciated Box’s decision not to have collateral characters gripe about cultural issues (Joe never indulges in controversial opinions). A character makes a predictable complaint about wind turbines, but a novel set in Wyoming wouldn’t be realistic if characters didn’t express their “it’s all about me” political philosophy. Those opinions have been distracting in some Pickett novels, but Box keeps his focus on the plot in this one.

The Crossroads is a solid entry in the Pickett series. The mystery is engaging and the resolution is credible. The evil ranchers are amusing. They each have a credible motive to put Joe in a grave. Box sprinkles in enough action scenes to keep the story moving but doesn’t try to turn the daughters into action heroes. Because the story makes few references to events that occurred in earlier novels, crime novel fans who haven’t tried a C.J. Box novel can easily read The Crossroads as an introduction to the series.

RECOMMENDED

The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel

Published by Tordotcom on February 17, 2026

The Rainseekers is a lovely novella about the first humans to feel rain on Mars. Humanity has survived “the Great Insect Collapse and the Climate Wars that followed.” Mars has been colonized and is in the process of being terraformed. Some places have pockets of breathable air. Weather scientists have predicted the first rainfall will occur in one such pocket. A group of colonists want to be there when it happens.

The story is narrated by Sakunja Salazar. Sakunja gained a social media following by sharing her grievances against her mother in the way that Eminem became famous by griping about his parents. Sakunja’s mother discouraged her social media efforts until she started to make money, then flipped out when Sakunja read On the Road and decided to abandon her fanbase to tour the solar system. For the last seven years, Sakunja has resided on Mars, where she indulges in “unhealthy binge drinking, drug abuse, periods of depression, and self-inflicted sleep deprivation.”

Sakunja works as a photographer but has taken an assignment from Ares magazine to tell the stories of the Martian colonists who hope to feel the first rainfall on Mars. Sakunja describes the novella’s theme in its early pages: “every soul has a story worth telling. All we have to do is just shut up and listen.” A related theme lies in Sakunja’s realization that, despite her “all-pervading sense of my unimportance,” her “life isn’t worthless. There is meaning, however small, to my existence.”

The novella is short and the interviews that Sakunja conducts are few, but the subjects tell compelling stories that share certain elements, including the importance of education and how our choices shape our future. Ghleanna Watanabe is the great-great-granddaughter of a Nigerian whose family discouraged his curiosity, urging him to work harder in the fields and to set aside his dreams. A kind man realized the potential of Gleanna’s ancestor and made it possible for him to pursue an education, allowing him to make discoveries that are vital to the Mars colony. The lesson Ghleanna draws from her ancestor’s life is that “we’re a fraught species. We murder and kill and lie and cheat and eat babies for breakfast. But every so often, despite our immeasurable stupidity, we do beautiful things.”

Jivanta Tanaka-Halevi was born on Mars. Her brittle bones would make it impossible for her to survive in Earth’s gravity. Her mother was a Japanese molecular bioscientist. Her father “was raised inside the Satmar sect of Hasidism” and sheltered from the outside world until a fire literally burned down the walls that surrounded him. Like Ghleanna’s ancestor, Jivanta’s father discovered the wonders of an education that freed him from the confining beliefs of his parents.

Two other characters view Mars as offering a second chance. Douglas Charles Baxter Jr. is the child of meth addicts. “He, like all of us thrust confused and alone into the world, has been swept along the brisk currents of life, grasping for handholds, for connection, while constantly being torn from everything he’s ever loved.” Shabnan Naderi was born in Iran, grew up in France, dropped out of school at the urging of a disastrous boyfriend-turned-husband, and served seventeen years in prison before venturing to Mars. Both characters confront misfortune but strive to be better people.

The individual stories are each inspiring in their own ways. The journey to find rain is dangerous and not all the travelers will survive. While the journey thus provides the elements of a science fiction adventure story, the plot primarily serves as a framework for the stories that Sakunja gathers. The novella’s larger point is the commonality of existence. Each of the disparate characters has overcome hardships; each is willing to endure more of them to experience the joy of being among the first humans to see rain on Mars.

The pleasure of reading Matthew Kressel’s graceful prose made me wish Sakunja had told the stories of each of her fellow travelers. Leaving the reader wanting more is the sign of a good storyteller. The novella might not appeal to science fiction fans who think sf should only be about clever humans defeating warrior aliens, but it might appeal to readers who don’t usually turn to sf but appreciate life-affirming stories about people who gain the courage to take risks and make choices that will change their destinies.

RECOMMENDED