3.5 stars.

A murder mystery that is interesting for its sympathetic and seemingly knowledgeable portrayal of the world of Japanese tattoos, and the people who were obsessed by them.

The main character Kenzo is drawn into a mysterious locked room murder, when the femme fatale Kinue Nomura, owner of an enrapturing full body tattoo of the Japanese sorcerer Orochimaru seems to be murdered and dismembered in her own home. Her beautiful tattoo, which is desired by many tattoo enthusiasts, has disappeared because her torso was missing. Two-thirds of the way into the book, he meets his old friend Kyosuke Kamizu, a childhood genius, who cracks the case.

For experienced mystery fans, this was not the hardest case to crack. If you are a Detective Conan fan for example, you might have guessed at some kind of mechanical contraption which creates the locked room. The fact that the torso is not present in the first murder but present in the third murder seemed to also hint that the body may not be that of Kinue. And of course, the second murder being the murder of focus is a plot device from the ABC murders. I wondered also if the woman was not actually the missing sister Tamae at all but a prostitute that resembles her; that seemed more believable than her surviving a blast in Hiroshima.

All in all, a fun read, especially for fans of the Japanese puzzle-type mystery novel.