The Kyoichiro Kaga Series

Acclaimed best-selling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he’s planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems.

Detective Kyochiro Kaga of the Tokyo Police Department has just been transferred to a new precinct in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo. Newly arrived, but with a great deal of experience, Kaga is promptly assigned to the team investigating the murder of a woman. But the more he investigates, the greater number of potential suspects emerges. It isn’t long before it seems nearly all the people living and working in the business district of Nihonbashi have a motive for murder.

On the Nihonbashi Bridge in Tokyo stands the statue of a mythic beast - a kirin. One evening a man staggers onto the bridge and collapses beneath the winged creature. The patrolman on watch goes to rouse the man, who he presumes to be drunk - only to discover that the man had been stabbed in the chest. He is dead. Meanwhile, a young man named Yashima is injured in a car accident nearby while trying to flee from the police. Found on him is the wallet of the murdered man.