The Little Sparrow Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Little Sparrow Murders is another book in the Detective Kindaichi series by Seishi Yokomizo. This one is set in 1955 in the small village of Onikobe. Kindaichi is on vacation here along with his friend Inspector Isokawa. There was a murder in the village back in 1932 that Isokawa had worked on as a young detective, but the the main suspect in the case had never been found. Twenty-three years later, a new series of murders breaks out, with the bodies of the victims arranged to allude to verses of a children’s song.

That’s about all I can say for fear of spoilers. It is a well-crafted mystery and was a lot of fun to read. It can be a little hard to keep track of all of the characters, but thankfully there is a list of characters at the beginning of the book, along with a map of Onikibe. I did have some suspicions but I did not figure out the entire mystery, including the identity of the killer, until it was all revealed by Kindaichi.

I definitely recommend this book. I’m definitely looking forward to reading another mystery in the Kindaichi series.