Get ready to share your favorite Japanese detective fiction with Mystery Readers Group

Menlo Park Library’s Mystery Readers Group is a different kind of book group. Rather than all reading the same book, participants share different books surrounding a particular theme — Japanese detective fiction, for instance.

“Honkaku” fiction has roots in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, blending the strictly codified rules of classic Western detective novels with a Japanese literary style. Honkaku mysteries are frequently fair play mysteries, incorporating diagrams and puzzle box elements to help the reader solve the crime.

The group next meets on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, from 6:00 to 7:15 pm, via Zoom. Register online.

Here are some suggested mysteries to read in advance:

The Devotion of Suspect X, by Keigo Higashino: When divorced mother Yasuko kills her abusive ex-husband in self-defense, her enamored neighbor Tetsuya Ishigami steps in to help cover it up. Detective Kusanagi can’t find any holes in her airtight alibi, so he calls in “Detective Galileo,” the physicist Dr. Manabu Yukawa.

The Honjin Murders, by Seishi Yokomizo: This book by one of Japan’s most renowned novelists won the first Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1948, was finally translated into English in 2019 — and then named by The Guardian as one of the best recent crime novels. This “perfect closed-room mystery,” set in 1937, shares a wedding in a mansion, a scream in the night — and bloody samurai sword in the pristine snow outside.

The Decagon House Murders, by Yukito Ayatsuji: Our six young protagonists are mystery super fans: the university detective-fiction club members are even nicknamed after crime writers: Poe, Carr, Orczy, Van Queen, Leroux, and Christie. When they visit the remote island site of a series of bloody unsolved murders, they become embroiled in an unsettling mystery of their own.

Newcomer, by Keigo Higashino: Detective Kyochiro Kaga, newly transferred to a precinct in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo and assigned to investigate a puzzling murder, soon discovers that nearly all the people living and working in the business district are suspects.

Strange Houses, by Uketsu: An unnamed writer drawn to the macabre investigates a Tokyo home with unusual, nonsensical details in its floor plan. With help from an architect friend, he uncovers disturbing design elements and a mystery tied to the former owners’ disappearance. As bodies surface and a second house emerges, the duo is pulled into a chilling puzzle.

Photo courtesy of Menlo Park Library