A detective’s ghost investigates his own unsolved murder in this Japanese modern crime classic.

GHOST DETECTIVE
by Alice Arisugawa
Pushkin Press, Autumn 2026

The beach at night. A detective by the name of Tatsuya Kanzaki is summoned by his division chief and killed, but his lingering attachments and bewilderment at his sudden murder leave him unable to pass onto the next world.

Unfortunately, nobody can see Kanzaki—not his killer, Kyodo, nor his fiancée, Sumako—nobody except Hayakawa, his psychic junior.

While investigating his own murder through Hayakawa’s powers, Kyodo is found dead in a locked room. His death can only mean one thing. Somebody else is the mastermind behind Kanzaki’s murder…

Step by step, Kanzaki and Hayakawa inch closer to the truth. But reaching closure means passing on, and Kanzaki must brace himself for his final goodbyes.

Translated by Cathy Hirano.

Alice Arisugawa was born in 1959 in Osaka and graduated from Doshisha University. While there, he studied mystery novels and eventually debuted as an author in 1989. Ghost Detective, first published in 2000, is one of his best-loved novels and has been adapted for the stage in Japan.