Murder at Lake Ashinoko

By Natsuki Shizuko
Translated by Robert B. Rohmer

Penguin (2026)
ISBN-13: 978-1529997286

Review by Laurence Green

The blurb to Murder at Lake Ashinoko proudly proclaims author Natsuki Shizuko as the “Queen of Crime”, a kind of Japanese Agatha Christie. It’s an apt comparison, and even amongst a remarkable surge in popularity for “classic” Japanese mystery fiction in translation - see also the likes of Matsumoto Seicho’s brooding, melancholic who-dunnits - Natsuki’s works have a particular knack for a kind of slow, lingering pacing that conjures up a world of criminality that feels uniquely placed within a particular place and time.

The irony is that these glossy new editions (this book, the second, follows a successful re-print of Murder at Mount Fuji last year) are in fact not the first time Natsuki’s crime novels have been printed in English. The translations date back to the 70s and 80s, and the joy of this is that they feel like the bottled essence of Japan in the midst of its booming bubble economy. All shiny on the surface, but with a lingering sense of unease just beneath the facade.

In Murder at Lake Ashinoko, the plot opens on a storm-lashed night in a secluded French hotel, where travelling businessman Daigo Kohei encounters the mysterious and magnetic Fumiko - a strange woman whose face remains hidden in the shadows. A kind of mutual, erotically-tinged fascination blooms, and they share their secrets, their fears, and the dark desires they have never dared reveal. Then comes a shocking confession: both have someone they want dead.

Together, they devise the ultimate murder pact - a perfect crime where each will eliminate the other’s enemy, leaving no trace and no connection between them. What begins as a dangerous fantasy soon becomes something far more sinister.

By morning, Daigo convinces himself the night was nothing more than a strange encounter best forgotten. But when he returns to Japan, news of a devastating ‘accident’ reaches him. Fumiko has kept her promise. Now the impossible bargain falls to him, and Daigo must decide how far he is willing to go.

Wrapped up in the proxy murder shenanigans is a far more unsettling undercurrent - corporate sabotage and the utter terror of product tampering, faulty products or just straight up health scares. It’s all super reality-adjacent, as scary as that might seem: The Glico/Morinaga extortion/cyanide-candy plot of 1984 and the unsolved Paraquat Murders of 1985, where hidden toxic chemicals in vending machine drinks killed 12 people are famous to this day in Japan.

So Natsuki’s brand of crime is one that feels fiendishly “real” - all the more so because its protagonists are the very definition of morally grey. Our central viewpoint character, Daigo, is a typical salaryman on the surface - dressed up in refined tastes for food and drink, and outward respectability. But as the plot progresses, we are forced to question again and again, what if he is simply an outright villain? What if the criminal is, in fact, the main character?

Murder mystery novels, broadly speaking, can be said to fall into one of two categories. Murders where we don’t know the culprit, or murders where we know exactly who did it and how it was done, but the thrill is from the chase - from wondering when the cops will catch up with the killer. Murder at Lake Ashinoko is of the second kind - and the inner psychology of this framing is crucial in forcing the reader to linger in the moral grey zone. Do we want Daigo to escape capture, or should he be forced to reckon with his actions?

The first two thirds of the book will no doubt feel slow to many readers - so if this kind of thing is a turn off, then steer clear. But it’s exactly this slow build that is so essential in engineering the sudden burst of momentum that kicks into gear in the final third. Like a finely tuned watch, every aspect of the novel’s meticulously detailed world is engineered to intersect, and the pleasure is in feeling how believable it all is. Characters feel like real people, not posturing cop-show rent-a-witnesses.

Perhaps the most obvious comparison to Agatha Christie though is the dark undercurrent of societal commentary at the heart of the novel. Many of the characters come from the social elite, and it's the pin-point accuracy with which Natsuki skewers their judgementality and petty foibles that gives the novel its hardest punch.

So, come for the crime, but stick around for the portrait of a Japan sharper than most, and an atmosphere that grips tighter and tighter with every turn of the page.