Prefecture D

by Hideo Yokoyama, translated from the Japanese by Jonathan Lloyd Davies (Riverrun)

Reviewer: Donal O’Donoghue

In the ’70s, Joseph Wambaugh emerged as the arch chronicler of the US precinct cop with such pulpy novels as The New Centurions and The Choirboys. The Japanese novelist Hideo Yokoyama covers a similar beat but rather than the mean streets of Los Angeles, his turf is the bright lights and bad seeds of greater Tokyo, both those in uniform and otherwise. For over two decades, he has knocked out high-class mystery thrillers, bagging awards and a huge readership in his homeland, the most lauded of which was Six Four (2012).

His latest, Prefecture D, set in the same division as Six Four, is a quartet of long short stories, all old-style mystery yarns spiked with red herrings and plot twists and turns. Indeed, the four could be subtitled alternatively The Mystery of The Briefcase, The Strange Disappearance of Officer Hirano and so on, such is the whiff of Sherlock Holmes. All four feature male officers, driven and ambitious, apart from one notable exception (‘Black Lines’) which exposes the sexism and machismo of a force where it seems everyone is watching everyone else’s back, most often to stick a knife in it. If at times you feel overwhelmed by the labyrinthine politics and a blizzard of names, you also realise these stories are like few others.