My Grandfather, the Master Detective

There used to be a cafe called Mon Cheri at Nishi Waseda where members of the Waseda Mystery Club spent day after day frothing in excitement over the latest mystery novels, and now he and Kaede solve mysteries together . . .

As a lover of classic crime stories, it’s perhaps no surprise that twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher Kaede encounters everyday mysteries more often than your average person. Solving them is another matter, though, and the person she always heads to for guidance is her beloved grandfather – who, despite having dementia, retains a keen sharpness of mind. From impossible locked-room murders to confounding missing person cases, the granddaughter and grandfather team ‘weave stories’ in master-and-apprentice fashion to get to the bottom of a variety of cases. All the while, a shadow slowly closes in on Kaede, posing a more insidious threat . . .

Steeped in references to classic crime from Christie to Chesterton to Poe, My Grandfather, the Master Detective playfully nods to forebears of the genre, while also carrying the light-hearted, escapist hallmarks of cosy crime books which have recently captured readers’ imaginations. Meanwhile, its charming characters and affectionate focus on relationships bring to mind heart-warming Japanese titles such as Before the Coffee Gets Cold.

Author Biography

Masateru Konishi graduated from the Department of English and American Literature at Meiji University, and now works as a writer for TV and radio. He has previously written for the stage as well as a manga story; My Grandfather, the Master Detective is his debut novel. Partly based on his own experience of caring for his father with dementia, the book won the twenty-first edition of the prestigious ‘This Mystery is Amazing!’ Grand Prize. He is currently working on a sequel with an estimated first print run of 30,000 copies.