This mystery was not for me. I struggled with a lot of things in it, but first and foremost the characters. They all annoyed me. I thought that Kenzo was a fool even by amateur sleuth standards, made up solely of naive ego. Then Kyosuke was the exact opposite, being too smart and a totally obnoxious know-it-all. He also comes into the story way later than I expected him too. And the professor creeped me out so much. Of the characters the only one I could stand was Daiyu, yet I still didn’t love him, mainly because, like all the men in this book, he was rather sexist. As for the plot, it also annoyed me, especially how it was solved. It started off as a classic detective plus amateur sleuth assistant, with a lot of procedure. I enjoyed that, though it was a bit slow for my taste. But then about halfway through it Kyosuke appeared, and apparently solved the crime in minutes but managed to drag on explaining it. The final solution was ultimately clever. And I enjoyed learning about the history of Japanese tattooing. But overall I did not enjoy this book.