Justified Murder (Novel) - Recommendations

• Vol: 1
• 1996

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems. At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at the same public school. Kaga went on to join the police force while Nonoguchi eventually left to become a full-time writer, though with not nearly the success of his friend Hidaka. As Kaga investigates, he eventually uncovers evidence that indicates that the two writers' relationship was very different that they claimed, that they were anything but best friends. But the question before Kaga isn't necessarily who, or how, but why. In a brilliantly realized tale of cat and mouse, the detective and the killer battle over the truth of the past and how events that led to the murder really unfolded. And if Kaga isn't able to uncover and prove why the murder was committed, then the truth may never come out.

• Vol: 4; Ch: 23
• 2001 - 2003

Imagine living in a town where supernatural beings stalk the night for their next prey. Toukei Ibun takes place 29 years after Tokyo was established as the capital of modern Japan. Manzou is the owner of an inn in the town of Asakusa. His friend Hirakawa is a journalist who is investigating the bizarre crimes that keep occurring all over the city in the dead of night.

• Vol: 1; Ch: 47
• 1995

Dr. Ando who has yet to recover from his son's death at sea, conducts an autopsy on an old friend who has died under unusual circumstances. The corpse, that of cynical philosophy professor Ryuji Takayama, has something to tell him.

• Vol: 3
• 2005 - 2006

A murder takes place in a locked room, with only one clue: a piece of paper filled with an incomprehensible warning: "Within three days I will steal the equivalent value of the life of the person who will be in this room." Two inspectors working for Sircam insurance, Isa et Senjo, think that the culprit is "Paper Cut". But who is this enigmatic murderer?

• Vol: 1; Ch: 13
• 1987

Students from a university mystery club decide to visit an island which was the site of a grisly multiple murder the year before. Predictably, they get picked off one by one by an unseen murderer. Is there a madman on the loose? What connection is there to the earlier murders?

• Vol: 1; Ch: 43
• 1998

In Loop, the killer mimics both AIDS and cancer in a deadly new guise. Kaoru Futami, a youth mature beyond his years, must hope to find answers in the deserts of New Mexico and the Loop project, a virtual matrix created by scientists. The fate of more than just his loved ones depends on Kaoru's success.

• Vol: 3+
• 2014 - ?

Obana is a maintenance worker and repairman, who frequently encounters stange mysteries surrounding the homes he manages... But with his extremely sharp reasoning skills, he brilliantly solves them all!

• Vol: 1; Ch: 23
• 2020

It has been three years since the calamity of 1998 that claimed the lives of many in Yomiyama North Middle School's class 3-3. Sou Hiratsuka will now have to work with survivor Mei Misaki to avert a new disaster.

• Vol: 1; Ch: 52
• 2021

In the wake of a brutal war with a rival cartel, a certain drug lord flees Mexico and ends up halfway around the world, where he runs into a Japanese organ broker doing business in Jakarta. After their fateful meeting, the two of them travel to Japan in order to establish a new business in the organ trade. There, the former cartel leader takes a young, lonely boy under his wing. These three lives gradually become inextricably entangled in a web of crime, violence, and human flesh…

• Vol: 6+
• 2018 - ?

Seiji Tohno sometimes sees the people around him as monsters. It is a curse that had driven him to a life of despair, living out of internet cafés with nowhere to call home...but all that changes one twilit evening when he stumbles across a huge European mansion. There, Seiji meets a bewitchingly beautiful boy dressed in a kimono with a white peony motif on the shoulder, who introduces himself as Shiroshi Saijou. This mysterious young man seems to know more about Seiji than he does himself, and before he knows it, Seiji has agreed to become Shiroshi’s assistant in exchange for room and board. Little does he know, however, this “proxy service,”’ as Shiroshi puts it, is none other than outsourced death! Sending monster-possessed sinners to Hell, will bring Seiji face-to-face with terrifying new creatures each and every day!