Available Formats
My Grandfather, the Master Detective
By (Author) Masateru Konishi
Translated by Louise Heal Kawai
Pan Macmillan
Macmillan
11th November 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Crime and mystery: cosy mystery
Crime and mystery: women sleuths / detectives
Fiction in translation
Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction
Narrative theme: sense of place
Paperback
352
Width 130mm, Height 197mm
There used to be a cafe called Mon Cheri at Nishi Waseda where members of the Waseda Mystery Club spent day after day frothing in excitement over the latest mystery novels, and now he and Kaede solve mysteries together . . . As a lover of classic crime stories, it's perhaps no surprise that twenty-seven-year-old schoolteacher Kaede encounters everyday mysteries more often than your average person. Solving them is another matter, though, and the person she always heads to for guidance is her beloved grandfather - who, despite having dementia, retains a keen sharpness of mind. From impossible locked-room murders to confounding missing person cases, the granddaughter and grandfather team 'weave stories' in master-and-apprentice fashion to get to the bottom of a variety of cases. All the while, a shadow slowly closes in on Kaede, posing a more insidious threat . . . Steeped in references to classic crime from Christie to Chesterton to Poe, My Grandfather, the Master Detective playfully nods to forebears of the genre, while also carrying the light-hearted, escapist hallmarks of cosy crime books which have recently captured readers' imaginations. Meanwhile, its charming characters and affectionate focus on relationships bring to mind heart-warming Japanese titles such as Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
The author nails the ending -- Nozomi Ohmori, Judge of the 'This Mystery is Amazing!' Prize
Sure to please the mystery buff in us all, with nods to classic mysteries. A variation of Deavers
Lincoln Rhyme.
The characters are appealing. Their conversations sparkle! . . . Masateru Konishi will write appealing
stories for years to come . . .
Masateru Konishi graduated from the Department of English and American Literature at Meiji University, and now works as a writer for TV and radio. He has previously written for the stage as well as a manga story; My Grandfather, the Master Detective is his debut novel. Partly based on his own experience of caring for his father with dementia, the book won the twenty-first edition of the prestigious 'This Mystery is Amazing!' Grand Prize. He is currently working on a sequel with an estimated first print run of 30,000 copies.