The Name of the Game Is a Kidnapping
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keigo Higashino was born in the lowest of lowly ghettos in Osaka, to poor parents, in a tiny house that in his words was “always one room short.” He lived off hand-me-downs, and from girls at that. Always lonely, he took to reading massive amounts of fiction—anything he could get his hands on.
An engineer by training, he became a full-time writer when his After School won the Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1985. His stateside debut came when Naoko was translated and published by Vertical, Inc. in 2004. Mr. Higashino’s fame in North America has only grown since. The Secret, the film adaptation of Naoko, was remade with David Duchovny, while The Devotion of Suspect X (from Minotaur Books) was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award in 2012. The Name of the Game is a Kidnapping, which spawned a theatrical feature called g@me., is the author’s second work to be brought over by Vertical.
MORE MYSTERY FROM VERTICAL
Pro Bono
by Seicho Matsumoto
ISBN 978-1-934287-02-6, $14.95/16.95
From the father of postwar Japanese mystery who steered the genre away from locked rooms and toward a wider world of social forces, a classic about a young woman’s revenge against a renowned lawyer.
City of Refuge
by Kenzo Kitakata
ISBN 978-1-934287-12-5, $14.95/18.95
It was only when the don of Japanese hardboiled came onto the scene in the ’80s that the style truly became homegrown, weaning itself of anti-heroes with native names and foreign mannerisms.
Naoko
by Keigo Higashino
ISBN 978-1-932234-07-7, $14.95/19.95
Winner of the Japan Mystery Writers Award, this black comedy of hidden minds and lives turned the author, one of Japan’s most ambitious and versatile mystery hands, into a perennial favorite.
KIZUMONOGATARI: Wound Tale
by NISIOISIN
ISBN 978-1-941220-97-9, $14.95/17.95
It doesn’t get more cutting edge than this genre-traversing work by the palindromic mystery writer, the leading light of a younger generation who began their careers in the twenty-first century.
Learn more at www.vertical-inc.com