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Astrologer, fortuneteller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must in one week solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years. Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, the supreme woman? With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion, pieced together like a great stage tragedy, challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain.

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´The great Soji Shimada virtually invented the "logic problem" sub-genre ´ - Guardian Top 10 Locked Room Mysteries (No. 2)

´Intricately constructed and entertainingly exotic´ - The Japan Times

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Soji Shimada is an author, designer, musician, and astrology writer. He has written over a 100 crime novels since his 1981 debut with The Tokyo Zodiac Murders. As a pioneer of the Shinhonhaku ´logic mystery´ genre he is known in the Japan as the ´God of Mystery´.
Translated from the Japanese by Ross and Shika MacKenzie.

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