A Rare Crime and Other Stories

A stolen blue diamond seems to promise three jewel thieves a new life abroad. Instead, a moment of suspicion sends them toward a gruesome and absurd disaster. In the title story, Kosakai Fuboku follows their desperate attempt to recover their prize with a storyteller’s cool wit and a taste for the grotesque.

The other two stories introduce Tsukahara Toshio, a twelve-year-old scientific detective whose intelligence outpaces the adults around him. In “The Crimson Diamond,” an anonymous warning and a newspaper cipher turn a family treasure into a contest of ingenuity. In “Ultraviolet Rays,” a mysterious message found on a dead man leads to a missing necklace, a haunted-looking house, and a shocking discovery in a hospital.

A physician and influential writer of Japanese detective fiction, Kosakai mixes practical investigation with startling invention. This complete collection offers a new English translation, with brief notes on historical references, Japanese ciphers, and the stories’ period science.