Inspector Otani #8

Go Gently, Gaijin - James Melville

This 1986 mystery was the 8^th of 13 novels starring Japanese police inspector Tetsuo Otani. His base is the city of Kobe, a port city in Hyogo prefecture. He is investigating the hit-and-run killing of one Arab outside the mosque in Kobe and the suicide of another Arab at a hot-spring resort hotel.

As usual, the investigation takes Otani to different spots that will resonate with readers who have visited the Kansai region. Otani spends time in Tor Road, home of shops selling fashionable clothes to antiques and many kissaten (tearooms) and restaurants. The hot-spring is the real Arima hot-spring on the other side of Mount Rokko from Kobe city. Otani also takes in the all-female theatrical troupe at the Takarazuka Revue. This is very nostalgic for a certain kind of reader.

Also, as usual, Otani, like Maigret, is surrounded by loyal supporters. Officer Kimura uses his flair for languages and intercultural interaction to good advantage. Officer Hara is the brainy one and Noguchi is the brawny streetwise one whose loyalty and strength reminds us of the folklore hero Benkei. Hara and Noguchi, however, hit it off in the kind of unlikely friendship that English writers can pull off so well (e.g. Darcy and Bingley). Otani’s marriage to Hanae reminds us of the strong marriage of Henry and Emmy Tibbett by Patricia Moyes.

Although Melville was a fiction writer, his prose feels academic with sentences lengthened to the point of irritation by prepositional phrases and relative clauses. The mystery takes a back seat to setting and characters, which is not a bad thing when it comes to mysteries set outside of the US and UK. Melville is sometimes gently satirical but never acerbic about Japanese people and their culture, which may or may not be a draw, depending on the depth of experience the reader has had with this delightful and exasperating people.