She had appeared from nowhere quietly watching the storm through the French doors of the Chateau Chantal's salon. Away from the cares of work and family in Japan, Kohei Daigo felt strangely drawn to this woman, also Japanese, whose haunting scent thrilled his senses. In the darkness of that quaint room in a faraway country they shared an experience beyond the physical, a poetic, almost religious frenzy of love... But they also shared their secrets: Daigo's hidden hatred for a fellow scientist responsible for the deaths of several children, and Fumiko's loathing for a killer who has never been caught. Without knowing it, Daigo struck a bargain that night that could separate him from Fumiko forever... and make him a murderer.
Author
Shizuko Natsuki (夏樹 静子) was born in Tokyo in 1938. She graduated from Keio University with a degree in English literature. She married in 1963 and moved to Fukuoka, where she has lived since that time with the exception of nine years spent in Nagoya. Natsuki is not only one of Japan’s best-selling mystery writers but also one of the most prolific. She has written more than eighty novels and short-story collections, and more than forty of her novels and stories have been made into films. Natsuki published her first mystery novel, Tenshi ga kiete iku (the angel has gone), in 1970. The first of her novels to be translated into English was W no higeki (1982; Murder at Mount Fuji, 1984). Several of her short stories have been published in translation in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Natsuki’s writing, like that of many other Japanese mystery writers of her generation, often shows the strong influence of well-known mystery writer Seich Matsumoto.
