The Secret of the Last Night

NATIONAL BESTSELLER IN JAPAN. PRINT RUN — MORE THAN 550,000 COPIES.
A gripping detective novel from a well-known Japanese writer, winner of the Hokkaido Shimbun Prize. The first novel in the Mitsui and Tadokoro detective расследований series.
“An astonishingly intricate mystery and a truly chilling story about motherhood.” — Ukezu, author of the bestseller “The Strange House”

Housewife Izumi Mizuno was sure she had a perfect life: a caring husband, two wonderful children, a warm home. Everything falls apart in a single night when her son Taiki—the quiet, inconspicuous schoolboy—is mistakenly taken for a suspect in a series of murders. Fleeing the police on a bicycle, he collides with a truck and dies. Why was Taiki out on the street deep at night? What was he trying to get away from? And is his death really just an accident, as it seems at first glance?

Fifteen years later, a young man, Tatsu hik o Momoi, disappears under strange circumstances. He is suspected of murdering his lover and is put on the wanted list. Tie, Tatsu hik o’s mother, doesn’t believe he is guilty, and, with no support from an indifferent daughter-in-law, decides to search for him herself.

As detectives Mitsuya and Tadokoro unravel the case step by step, a crucial thread emerges—connecting two incidents that, at first glance, have nothing to do with each other. They must answer the main question: how could the death of a boy fifteen years ago echo in a tragedy of the present?

The novel is translated from Japanese.