Nicolás Obregón is an author whose trilogy I’ve read from the start. His debut, Blue Light Yokohama, introduced us to his protagonist, Inspector Kosuke Iwata. Iwata was a newly appointed Tokyo homicide cop and was on the trail of a serial killer, the Black Sun Killer. Iwata was an outsider in the force and the events of that novel led him to leave the Tokyo Police under a cloud; he relocated to the United States, where he worked as a private detective, and this is where we found him for the sequel, Sins as Scarlet. In Obregón's second book, Iwata was asked to look into the death of a transgender relative and stumbled upon a cesspit of corruption and violence in the US/Mexican borderlands. Both Blue Light Yokohama, and its sequel, Sins as Scarlet, were brilliant novels, and so when the author brought out the third novel in the trilogy, I was keen to read it.
Unknown Male takes Iwata back to Tokyo, Japan. A British student, Skye Mackintosh, has been found murdered and with the world’s press taking an interest, the Tokyo Homicide Department is desperate for a quick result. Iwata’s old boss, the head of the unit, is dying of pancreatic cancer and determined not to have the Mackintosh murder unsolved, and thus a blot on his legacy. He calls Iwata back to Tokyo to lead the investigation, installing him as a consultant, though in actual fact he is in charge. Joining him as an observer is DC Anthea Lynch of London’s Metropolitan Police. She has as many issues as Iwata and has been sent to Tokyo to keep an eye on the Japanese investigation into Skye’s murder as a means of keeping her out of trouble back home.
Alongside the high-profile investigation into the murder of Skye Mackintosh is a second investigation which is receiving much less attention, the disappearance of a number of sex workers. It is not clear how linked this is to the murder of Skye and the author does not reveal this until the very end. Neither does he reveal until the end what link, if any, and to which case, the seemingly normal but in actual fact brutal serial murderer, Mr Soto, has. The author weaves all these strands together throughout the novel, each barely touching the other, but doing so enough that we know that one or more are going to impact with each other in the finale. He does this deftly and the plotting of Unknown Male is impressively done.
This isn’t a particularly violent or gruesome novel, but Unknown Male has some horrific elements. Most noticeable is what Mr Soto does with women he’s kidnapped. I won’t go into details but the drink he prepares for them is the stuff of nightmares. But like Hitchcock, the author knows the power of imagination, and these elements are touched on lightly, with much left to the reader to picture for themselves. This is much more effective, in my opinion, than those writers who graphically describe in technicolor and visceral detail.
Unknown Male is perhaps the final book of the author’s to feature his hero Kosuke Iwata. The book closes his story nicely, and while it’s left open for his return in a future novel, it’s also quite possible that his journey has come to an end. It’s a brilliant novel and a fitting end to a brilliant trilogy. Nicolás Obregón is now working on a standalone and some scripts and if they’re as good as this series of novels then I await them eagerly.
5 out of 5 stars
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