Pathway to Japanese Literature
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Fifth-Floor WindowAuthor: Kosakai Fuboku
| Original Title | 五階の窓 |
|---|---|
| Author | 小酒井 不木 |
| Genre | Detective & Mystery |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In a snow-draped city simmering with secrets, detectives clash over a magnate’s fatal plunge. When President Nishimura’s corpse is found shattered on a winter street, rival investigators Fuyuki and Okita pursue fractured truths: a hospital ambush exposes disguised labor agitator Funaki and his estranged siblings—Ochou, a conflicted mistress, and Enko, a typist harboring violent dreams. A web of grudges emerges—land theft, counterfeit schemes, and a workers’ strike—as a mystery novelist deciphers coded confessions in sleep-tossed murmurs. Autopsy revelations and phantom footprints in dust point to a ruptured past: syphilitic madness, a lover’s desperate blow, and a window ledge’s fatal lure. Yet every alibi frays—detectives dissect lies in interrogation rooms thick with tension, where alliances shift like shadows. Between staged arrests and betrayals, motives blur: vengeance? Protection? Or a guilt-stricken leap? As snow muffles footsteps, forensic science collides with human frailty, unraveling a tragedy where truth itself seems to fall from dizzying heights. |
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