Book Review: Neon Off Snow by Nick McCarthy

Neon Off Snow by Nick McCarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Good start to this unique Japanese detective series set in Osaka Prefecture.

Neon Off Snow is a new detective novel by Nick McCarthy that introduces readers to former Osaka Prefecture Police detective-turned-private eye Jon Nabeta. As a contracted consulting detective to the OPP, Nabeta is drawn into the murder of a fifteen-year-old yakuza princess that mimics the details of his most high-profile case from back when he was still with the police, the Osaka Kid Killer. With the lawyers of the convicted killer, the OPP’s former police commissioner, out to prove this new murder exonerates their client, Nabeta and his colleagues scramble to find the copycat killer and avert a war among the local yakuza families.

Jon Nabeta is not your ordinary detective. The product of two half-American, half-Japanese parents, he looks a little different from his coworkers, and some people have a problem with that. He compensates by being the best at what he does: solving difficult crimes. Soon after his success in solving the Osaka Kid Killer case, he left the police service to go into private practice, but the reasons are not revealed until almost the end of the novel. Somewhere north of 30, Jon has had a problem relationship-wise with commitment, but his current girlfriend, Rian, has him rethinking his future life path.

The plot follows Jon as he works the few clues discovered with the victim. There is so little to go on, Jon dives into his vast pool of contacts, informants, and information brokers for even the barest whisper of why the daughter of the powerful yakuza boss, Mamoru Usei, was murdered. The meetings with these shadowy, sometimes dangerous, underground figures yield meager suggestions for follow-up, and each scene is a perfectly developed, self-contained gem fraught with tension and atmosphere. The story is complex, with events from the past continuing to play a role in the present.

I immensely enjoyed the close-up view of Japanese law enforcement processes, structure, and attitudes, and the plot depended quite a bit on lax protocol in evidence handling, non-existent building security, and lack of communication among investigative staff. There were a few continuity issues that were bothersome enough to require me to backtrack and reread previous scenes to try to make sense of the aspects of the story (i.e., the murder victim is naked when discovered but clothed when the body gets to the morgue.) Also, a pet peeve for me is that Nabeta is described multiple times as an unnaturally skilled deductive thinker/detective, yet he fails to connect pieces of evidence he wrongly removes from crime scenes until much later. Still, he is an engaging character, a dogged, persistent investigator with an amazing array of useful contacts and interesting informants.

With its unique Osaka setting, insider’s/semi-official police point of view, and cinematic interview scenes and action sequences, I recommend Neon Off Snow to readers of traditional mysteries and police procedurals.

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advanced Review Copy from Reedsy Discovery.

View all my reviews