The Black Swan Mystery by Tetsuya Ayukawa and Translated by Bryan Karetnyk

When the director of a mid-range textile firm in Tokyo is found dead the question that Inspector Onitsura must answer isn't who had the motive to kill the director but who didn't. Almost as soon as his death is announced multiple suspects jump out and the team investigating the case hits a dead and not just because their victim seems to be a womanizing jerk, but because more bodies connected to the case keep popping up. The Chief finally has Onitsura take a second look at things after their lead suspect is found dead and he almost immediately finds the murderer, he just has to crack their airtight albi first. 

Another fantastic overly complicated murder that has all kinds of misdirection (especially all of the language directed towards women) that leads to less of a who done it and more of a how the hell do we prove it ending. 

I really enjoyed Onitsura and I think he may be a new favorite. He's much more gosh just normal than some of the other detectives in books from this time frame. He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, and he examines things from all angles. He is just a really great character all around. I also like that at least in this one he's the "fresh eyes" guy and he's not a jerk about it. The two detectives that were originally assigned the case overlook some things that had mean saying "OMFG are you kidding me!?" and while Onitsura eludes to this being laziness on the other detectives' parts he says something once and moves on. It allowed for harmony among the police instead of in-fighting drama which was great. 

The murders themselves were needlessly complicated in the best possible ways. The murderer clearly believes they are the smartest person in the room and that is, as usual, their undoing. I also feel like there's a bit of panic to their "planning" as well though and while the murderer seems to think that all of this extra is sound, logical planning when at the end they give their confession it doesn't sound like that at all. It sounds like they came up with all of these plans at the very last minute on no sleep and way too much caffeine. I loved it!

I also really enjoyed how you really have to pay attention to everything in this. All of the clues are right there making this extremely easy to figure out but it's not easy to parse what's important and what's not. But there are several themes, things that are mentioned in passing over and over again that become some of the biggest clues to the killer's identity. 

Highly recommend it, this is a fantastic read that is more police procedural than anything but the first half of it is definitely a mystery as they try to figure out who the killer is. The second half is how they did it and it was a really fun puzzle that made you think. You're invested by this point and trying to nail the bad guy is just as much a point of pride for you the reader as it is for Onitsura I think!

As always thanks to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for the eArc!