Originally posted April 26, 2024. It is a melody of bitter hatred, as if it were drenched in foul blood. The Pushkin Vertigo imprint has been great for crime fiction in translation. The Kōsuke Kindaichi series by Seishi Yokomizo, in particular, seems to have stuck, with five books and counting of the series’ 77. I’ll keep reading them as long as they keep publishing them. Kindaichi can be a frustrating detective at times—he’s a deceptively savvy investigator with a rumpled appearance and a self-effacing manner, and very likeable, for the same reasons as your Father Browns or Columbos. But he’s also not very good at his job. The books often feature high body counts, as Kindaichi endeavours to figure out the reason behind a string of murders to protect the next victim. He proceeds to fail at this on every conceivable level. Rinse and repeat. In one particularly notable example, almost every other named character in the setting is killed off before he “solves” the case. By...