The Third Woman
Tags
Summary
A tour de force of reversals that reveals the murder trick on the very first page, yet still keeps the truth out of reach!
A whim of Cupid brings a man and a woman together on a stormy night in Barbizon on the outskirts of Paris.
Yet what begins as a fleeting romance gives rise to two apparently motiveless murders in Fukuoka and Hakone.
The prefectural police of both regions pursue the killers separately—until the case takes a sharp turn…
The truth behind the crime is staggering.
An unyielding reality, a幕后 shrouded in mystery—this is a suspense novel, and also a tangle of human nature.
Natsuki Shizuko, a leading author of Japanese social mystery fiction, is acclaimed by Ellery Queen; the French edition of this book won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Editor's review
From a professional perspective, the trick is ingeniously designed and logically rigorous, but what deserves even greater praise is its solid foundation in social realism. With a cool yet delicate touch, Natsuki Shizuko depicts the multiple pressures and identity anxieties faced by urban women during the period of rapid economic development in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. The construction of the core image of "the third woman" not only points to a key figure in the plot but also serves as a metaphor for the self that is overlooked by society beyond the multiple roles of wife, mother, and professional.
In terms of reading value, the book offers a dimension of thought beyond entertainment. Readers can not only enjoy the pleasure of unraveling the mystery step by step but also glimpse a cross-section of an era through the case and feel the author's deep humanistic concern for women's fate. The narrative pace is well modulated, achieving a good balance between suspense and psychological portrayal of characters, making the work both literary and readable. For readers who hope to gain a richer experience from mystery fiction, this is a remarkable work not to be missed.
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers who love social mystery fiction and care about the human and social issues behind cases
- Readers interested in Japanese society and women's living conditions in the last century
- Lovers of suspense novels with rigorous logic, solid plotting, and well-rounded characters
- Readers seeking a deeper reading experience within genre literature
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking pure puzzle-solving, high-speed action, or surreal settings
- Readers looking for light entertainment and complete escape from real-life pressure
Reading tips
- When reading, focus not only on "who did it" and "how" but also consider "why it happened," and appreciate the social foreshadowing the author has planted
- Pay attention to the descriptions of everyday details, which are often important foundations for building the atmosphere of the era and the characters' motivations
- After finishing the ending, revisit the multiple references of the title "The Third Woman"; you may gain a deeper understanding
About the publisher
Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House is a publisher known for its literary titles, with a catalogue spanning foreign literature, world classics, classical Chinese literature, essays and miscellaneous writings, and mystery and detective fiction. Judging from the more than 1,100 books in the database, the press publishes foreign classics such as Crime and Punishment, Snow Country, The Complete Sherlock Holmes and Letter from an Unknown Woman, as well as Chinese classical and modern literary works including Lu Xun's Wandering and A Madman's Diary and Wu Jingzi's The Scholars. In terms of translators and authors, translations by Cao Guowei and Tan Jinghua appear in its foreign literature titles, and the authors involved include Dostoevsky, Kawabata Yasunari, Conan Doyle and Zweig. Its publishing character lies in introducing Chinese and foreign literary classics side by side, balancing popular and serious works and attending to both readability and literary value. Public information is limited; the above is a brief overview based solely on the books in the database.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 秋日风暴
- 抉择之时
- 音信
- 访客
- 翠景
- 目标
- 沙漏
- 倩影
- 蓝宝石水貂
- 追查
- 明信片
- 重逢
- 交集
- 岸边
- 尾声
- 解说深野治
FAQ
Is this book pure orthodox mystery?
Will not having read other works by Natsuki Shizuko affect my understanding?
Are the depictions of the female perspective in the book authentic and profound?
Comments
Find this book
This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Natsuki Shizuko is an author known for suspense and mystery fiction. Public information about her is limited, and reliable records of biographical details such as nationality and dates of birth and death are not available. According to the current catalog, one of her works is held in the collection: her representative novel The Third Woman. This work is classified as suspense and mystery, suggesting that her writing focuses on building suspense and unfolding the process of deduction rather than on purely social realism or emotional narrative. Given the limited material, it is difficult to describe the full scope of her writing or her literary standing. Judging from the title and classification of The Third Woman, however, the work likely revolves around identity, secrets, and the search for truth, with the puzzle-driven progression and reversals common to mystery fiction. For readers who enjoy suspense and mystery, Natsuki Shizuko's work can serve as an entry point into this style of storytelling, with its value lying mainly in the interest and readability of genre writing; further assessment would require more works and materials.
Cao Yibing is a Chinese author with a notably wide range of subjects; the library holds 45 of her works. Judging from the available titles, her writing and editorial work span several fields. On one hand, she engages with Japanese folk craft and craft culture, contributing to works such as The Beauty of Japanese Folk Craft: The Collected Works of Yanagi Soetsu (4 volumes), Forty Years of Folk Craft, and Craft Culture. On the other hand, she touches on travel and food writing, as seen in A Tree of Travel and the Vegetable Classroom series. She also ventures into mystery and detective fiction, such as the Countdown to the Statute of Limitations, along with essay collections and foreign literature like The Language of Magic. Her works commonly fall under culture, travel, food, mystery and detective fiction, essays, and foreign literature, reflecting a cross-disciplinary curiosity and editorial perspective. Public information about her nationality, dates, education, and personal background is limited; the above is based only on the library's holdings.
