The wages of Zen

James Melville

In 1979 James Melville introduced a significant new figure to British crime fiction, the Japanese detective Superintendent Tetsuo Otani of the Hyogo Prefectural Police. Otani, a very human but also very Japanese policeman, has to supervise an investigation which begins with a murder (a relatively rare crime in Japan) in a small Zen temple community where all the suspects are foreigners, but soon he and his trusted team of colourful and streetwise detectives are confronting organised crime and political duplicity. Over 13 years and 13 novels, James Melville used Otani’s meticulous investigations to provide a revealing portrait of Japanese society caught between strict traditions and the relentless pace of modernisation. Otani is also well aware (having joined the police during the post war American occupation) that policing has changed most of all.