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the complete review - fiction

Honeymoon to Nowhere

by
Takagi Akimitsu

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : a bit inconsistent, but solid enough overall

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Takagi's masterful psychological portraits here recall those of Patricia Highsmith or William Irish in their depiction of individuals enveloped by intrigue that threatens to destroy them." - Publishers Weekly

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       At twenty-six Etsuko Ogata is quickly aging out of the marriage-market; still suffering from the recent heartbreak of falling secretly in love with a man who had now married her closest friend, Kyoko, the novel opens with her nevertheless at least having an offer on the table, from Tetsuya Higuchi, "a young lawyer who had long been a protégé of her father, himself a lawyer". She's not particularly enthusiastic -- "I don't dislike him ... But I can't say I particularly like him either" -- but Higuchi courts her determinedly. However, she also conveniently happens to meet another man -- a somewhat scatterbrained university lecturer specializing in management, Yoshihiro Tsukamoto -- and begins dating him as well; he is much more to her liking.
       Etsuko keeps her relationship with Yoshihiro from her parents, but her father learns about him and looks into his background, helped by Higuchi. While Yoshihiro seems to be an upstanding enough man, there is a family-taint: his father was an unrepentant rightist. And there is also a no-good younger brother, who died in a fire in which Yoshihiro was also injured .....
       All this doesn't sway Etsuko; instead, she reacts to the revelations by insisting on marrying Yoshihiro -- leaving her parents with no alternative but to acquiesce, despite their misgivings. There is a marriage -- but no honeymoon. The night they are married, Yoshihiro gets a telephone call, and he explains to Etsuko that he has to deal with something, but that he'll be back shortly. But he isn't, winding up murdered instead.
       More unanswered questions soon surface, and there's the fact that Yoshihiro seems to have been quite well-off -- better than he should be, given his academic position and career. The investigation is led by State Prosecutor Saburo Kirishima (who also features in The Informer, as well as a dozen other, not yet translated novels by Takagi) -- the man Etsuko was in love with, and whom her friend Kyoko married (though this does not particularly come into play in the novel).
       It is the motive, in particular, that Kirishima and the police have trouble figuring out -- and a second murder, clearly by the same perpetrator, doesn't clear things up either. But Kirishima slowly puts together the pieces and learns the secrets Yoshihiro and his family had been hiding -- though even then the lack of hard evidence means he has to stage things and get the murderer to basically give himself away, making for a dramatic arrest.
       The mystery itself, and everything behind and around it, get a bit messy, but for the most part Honeymoon to Nowhere is an entertaining crime novel. Etsuko is an interesting character -- though she fades somewhat from the fore after Yoshihiro's death (except in her continued determination to have her way) --, and Kirishima (who only really comes into the picture with Yoshihiro's death, well into the novel) a solid, methodical investigator. The supporting characters, from Etsuko's parents to obsessive Higuchi to Yoshihiro's other brother, and the way they try to what they think is best for Etsuko also makes for effective tensions.
       Set in the mid-1960s, Honeymoon to Nowhere also offers an interesting picture of Japan and Japanese society, including regarding a variety of matters of kinship, as well as specifically marriage (and a bit about sex, with one steamy sex-scene slipped in). Bringing in -- though at some distance -- topics such as right-wing extremism as individuals and families still deal with their behavior during the Second World War (Etsuko reminds her father that he, too: "willingly served the military as a prosecutor during the war"), as well as industrial intellectual property (nore-or-less-)theft adds to the novel's depth, even if some of these threads arguably aren't used to their fullest.
       Takagi ranges about rather too much in what he wants the novel to be, not least with the way the murderer is caught out and caught, and he misses some opportunities in not focusing as much on the strong character of Etsuko through to the end, but Honeymoon to Nowhere is certainly a fine mystery novel that still holds up well.

- M.A.Orthofer, 23 September 2026

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Links:

• Soho Press publicity page
• Einaudi publicity page

• Kirkus Reviews
• Publishers Weekly
• ThrillerNord (Italian)
• Violet in Japan (Italian)

• The Informer
• The Noh Mask Murder
• The Tattoo Murder Case

• See Index of Mysteries and Thrillers
• See Index of Japanese literature

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About the Author:

       Japanese author Takagi Akimitsu (高木彬光) lived 1920 to 1995.

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© 2026 the complete review

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