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The Neon Alley Murder CaseAuthor: Unno Juza

Original Titleネオン横丁殺人事件
Author海野 十三
GenreDetective & Mystery
Author TypeMale Author
SummaryOn a bone-chilling night in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, where neon signs flicker like frozen specters, eccentric physicist-turned-sleuth Homura Soroku stumbles into a labyrinth of deception. Drunk and disoriented in the desolate Neon Alley, he witnesses a shadowy figure fleeing a scene punctuated by a woman’s bloodcurdling scream. Inside Café Argon, a café owner lies dead—shot through a knothole in an attic, the murder weapon mysteriously abandoned. Suspects multiply: a jealous rival café proprietor, a jilted mistress, a missing waitress, and Ippei, a neon craftsman with a grudge and an alibi airtight enough to baffle even Homura. As temperatures plunge to unnatural lows, the detective uncovers eerie clues—a discarded lighter, a rigged pistol—hinting at a crime engineered through chilling ingenuity. Homura races to untangle a web of factory slang-laced threats, illicit affairs, and a murder method as coldly precise as the night itself. But in Neon Alley’s frozen glow, every shadow hides a lie, and the truth may be as fragile as ice.