Detective Hideo Aoki, a twenty year veteran of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, suddenly has problems. After eighteen months of work on a covert investigation into ex-governor Yukio Tamaki’s involvement in corruption and other crimes, Aoki is abruptly removed from the case. Aoki’s supervisor, Police Superintendent Watanabe, without explanation, reassigns Aoki to other, insignificant cases.

Then, when news of the police department’s secret investigation of the prominent politician inexplicably shows up in the news media, Aoki is summarily suspended from duties. To make matters worse, Aoki finds himself under police surveillance and feels like he is some sort of common criminal. He has—as he sees it—“lost face.” And when a series of personal problems and disastrous incidents profoundly affect his family, Aoki is very much on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

It is at this point that Aoki is sent by Superintendent Watanabe to the remote Kamakura Inn at Hokkaido, ostensibly for a period of rest and rehabilitation. But Aoki soon discovers that the Kamakura Inn may have been the scene of an unsolved criminal case involving a woman who mysteriously disappeared without a trace seven years earlier. Aoki’s curiosity is whetted, and gradually—as he discretely investigates and learns more about the several guests and the staff of the inn—Aoki finds himself enmeshed in a very dangerous web of secrets, passions, and murder. And, most incredibly, Aoki soon realizes that everyone at Kamakura Inn might actually be involved, in one way or another, with many of the other problems that Aoki thought he had left behind in Tokyo.

Marshall Brown’s Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn is a thoroughly effective variation on the classic mystery thriller in which all the suspects (and the sleuth) are locked away at a remote location, and during which the sleuth races against time to unmask the guilty party before more mayhem befalls everyone. Filled with intriguing details, plenty of action, crisp prose, taut plotting, fascinating settings, and sharp characterizations, Brown’s novel is an absolute knock-out. Don’t miss it!