The Master Key
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3.9 • 9 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The prize-winning debut mystery from one of Japan's best-loved crime writers
The K Apartments for Ladies are occupied by over one hundred unmarried women, once young and lively, now grown and old—and in some cases, evil.
Their residence conceals a secret connecting the unsolved 1951 kidnapping of four-year-old George Kraft to the clandestine burial of a child's body in the basement bath-house. So, when news comes that the building must be moved to make way for a road-building project, more than one tenant waits with apprehension for the grisly revelation that will follow. Then the master key is lost, stolen and re-stolen—and suddenly no-one feels safe.
Fiendish intrigue, double identity and an ingenious plot make this a thriller worthy of comparison with the work of P.D. James.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1962, Togawa's first novel is an outstanding puzzle mystery. In a prologue, set in 1951 Tokyo, an unidentified man, dressed as a woman, tries to cross a busy street against the light and is fatally struck by a van. A nameless woman living in the K Apartments for Ladies waits alone for seven years for the dead man's return and is still waiting. Flash back to three days before the accident. The man carries a traveling bag containing a child's corpse to the woman's apartment. Hours later they bury the body in the building's basement, an act witnessed unbeknownst to them by a third person. Most of the action takes place seven years after these events, when the tenants of the building, mainly women leading secluded and lonely lives, are scheduled to be moved and their numerous secrets are threatened to be revealed. The gradual, logical, but still surprising unfolding of the Russian nesting doll of a plot is a delight.
