Introducing one the most iconic investigative duos in crime fiction - a hapless detective and his capable cat – A Game of Cat and Killer is a must for all readers of Japanese cat fiction and classic crime, written by one of Japan's most beloved novelists.
Detective Yoshitaro Katayama is afraid of many things: heights, dark spaces, blood and . . . women. When a young female student is found murdered, he's given two choices - review the harrowing crime-scene photographs or head to Hagoromo Women's College to investigate - and reluctantly opts for the latter.
But the threat escalates with additional murders, and soon Katayama has a different surprise on his hands: a calico cat named Holmes, orphaned when the dean himself falls victim. Surely that's the last thing Katayama needs. Until Holmes begins to display some uncanny investigative instincts of her own . . .
Release date:
September 29, 2026
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Print pages:
320
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Katayama barely managed to lift his heavy eyelids. His colleague Okada’s face looked a little blurry.
“What was that?” Katayama muttered.
“The boss. He’s calling you.”
“Oh… right.”
Katayama dragged himself to his feet. Princess was just a nickname—Katayama was a perfectly ordinary twenty-eight-year-old man. Well, ordinary except for the fact that he possessed an abundance of drowsiness rather than youthful vigor.
Tall and lanky, with a round, boyish face perched on top of a long frame, he had a gangly walk that made him look a bit like a giraffe trying to figure out its own legs. The slightly sloped shoulders and rounded eyes and nose gave him a mild, gentle look, almost feminine in appearance. But that wasn’t the only reason his colleagues called him Princess…
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Detective Katayama stood before Inspector Shigeru Mitamura, head of the First Investigative Division.
“Yeah. Sit down.”
Mitamura came across as the kind of middle-aged guy who would lend you a wrench and tell a decent dad joke. Apart from that impression, nothing in particular stood out about him, but those familiar with him knew he was one of the sharpest minds in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Normally mild-mannered, when he did blow up, the thunderclap was said to echo through the entire building.
Katayama eased himself into a wobbly chair and studied his superior’s face. Not too bad, he thought. Partly cloudy, no need for an umbrella.
“I’ve got a job for you,” Mitamura said, lifting his eyes from the thick stack of papers in front of him.
“I see…”
“That murder from three nights ago.”
Uh-oh. Katayama swallowed hard. That murdered university student? The one who was hacked to pieces?
“Looks like it’s going to take some time to pin down the killer,” Mitamura went on. “We’re working through the list of known psychos, but there are a lot of them.”
Katayama remembered his colleagues coming back from the crime scene, pale and shaken. The entire room had been a sea of blood, the girl’s body hanging halfway off the bed, arms and head dangling down, her eyes frozen wide in terror, her belly slashed open, her insides spilling out…
“So, what I want you to do—hey, what’s the matter? You okay?”
“Y-yes, sir…”
Katayama’s face had gone chalk white, beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. Pull yourself together!
“I’m fine, sir… Sorry.”
Mitamura sighed. “You’re hopeless. I’ve worked in the force for a long time, but you’re the first detective I’ve met who gets squeamish at the sight of blood.”
“Honestly, it’s embarrassing to admit.”
“Relax. I’m not asking you to handle the murder itself. You won’t have to see the body.”
“Really?” Katayama felt like someone who had just been given back his life.
“The victim, Yumiko Kurihara, was a third-year student at Hagoromo Women’s University.”
“Hagoromo? Like the heavenly robe of a celestial maiden?”
“That’s what it’s called, but no relation to angels. The founder’s name was Kokichi Hagoromo.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, as you’ve probably guessed, the victim had been using a friend’s apartment to, well, do a little part-time prostitution. They call it an easy side gig these days, apparently. The school asked us to keep it quiet, so nothing’s been released to the press.”
Katayama recalled reading a newspaper article that had hinted at something along those lines.
“The dean of Hagoromo’s literature department is a guy named Morisaki. He and I went to university together. He’s asked me to look into the prostitution angle—says there’s something specific he wants checked out. I’d like to help him, but I’m drowning in work here. I want you to go talk to him.”
“Understood,” Katayama said, now perfectly composed again. “Just go see what he has to say, right?”
“Exactly. Hear him out and report back. Tell him we’ll do what we can to accommodate them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This should be right up your alley, seeing as it doesn’t involve any blood.”
That sounded a little like sarcasm, but Katayama preferred to take people’s words at face value.
“Anything else, sir?”
“That’s all. Morisaki should be waiting for you. Head over right away.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Remember, Hagoromo Women’s University.”
“I know, sir.”
As he stood up, a thought suddenly struck him.
“Um… since it’s a women’s university… does that mean the students are all, well, women?”
“I haven’t heard of any men enrolling there lately,” Mitamura said dryly.
Katayama’s face turned pale again. His skin could change color faster than a traffic light.
“Inspector… I’m terribly sorry, but could someone else take this one?”
“Why?”
“Well… I’m, uh, really bad with women. If I get near a group of them, I get headaches, dizziness, nausea… sometimes even hives.”
He stopped when he saw Mitamura’s expression darken. Uh-oh. Thunderclouds forming.
“I see. Then maybe I should show you the crime-scene photos of the murdered girl instead.”
“N-no! That’s quite alright!”
“Then you’ll go to Hagoromo?”
“Y-yes, sir! Right away!” Katayama hurried to the door, then hesitated again. “Um… how do I get there?”
Mitamura glared at him in exasperation, then pulled a small slip of paper from his notebook and handed it over. “Here’s the address. Take a taxi.”
“You’ll cover the cab fare?”
“Yeah.”
Perfect—means I can nap on the way, Katayama thought, glancing at the note. He took a few steps, then stopped again. Should I? Well, it’s not really a big deal… but as a public servant, I suppose I ought to be thorough.
“Um, sir…?” he began timidly.
“What now?” Mitamura demanded.
“About this address…”
“Is it wrong?”
“No, no. It’s fine. Just… what’s the postal code?”
And that was when the lightning struck.
“Can you take me here?”
Katayama climbed into the taxi, handed the driver the address, and slumped back into the seat as if to say, Wake me when it’s over. He shut his eyes, thinking he would catch a quick nap—but the car didn’t set off.
“Hey, aren’t we going?”
“Where exactly is this supposed to be?” The driver frowned and held up the note. “‘Katsudon, 350 yen. Tendon, 400 yen’… You sure this is a place and not a menu?”
“Oh—wrong one.” Katayama snatched back his cafeteria meal ticket in a panic and handed over the note with the address for Hagoromo Women’s University. Without the meal ticket, he would be skipping lunch until payday.
“Hagoromo Women’s University, huh? You a cop?”
“Yes.”
“You going there about that murdered girl?”
“Something like that,” Katayama said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“It’s pretty far, you know?” The driver merged into traffic and added, “Wouldn’t the train be cheaper? Waste of money, if you ask me.”
Katayama was too taken aback to reply.
The driver pressed on. “Your fare’s coming out of our taxes, right?”
“Well, when you put it that way…”
“Try spending it a little more wisely, will ya?”
Katayama frowned. “Then why’d you agree to take me?”
“Just getting a little refund on the taxes I overpaid,” the driver said with a straight face.
Katayama thought that was the strangest logic he had ever heard, but no matter how he turned it over in his head, he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was wrong with it. Giving up, he stared out the window instead. His drowsiness had vanished anyway.
It was one of those October days that slipped back and forth between autumn and winter depending on the hour. As morning tipped into noon, the warm sunlight poured down on businessmen and working women out for a midday stroll, each playing their part in Tokyo’s lunchtime theater.
Why didn’t I just become one of those regular office guys? he wondered. It’s got to be easier than this detective gig—and better paying, too. It’s not too late. I could still do it… if I really wanted to.
Yoshitaro Katayama—an old-fashioned name, though not his fault. It had been given to him by his father, a legendary so-called demon detective, famous in the Metropolitan Police for his skill and ferocity.
That same father had been off duty one day when he spotted a burglar slipping out of a house and, in trying to make an arrest, got himself stabbed to death. Katayama had been twenty. His mother had already passed away, so he ended up living alone with his sister, Harumi, seven years his junior.
Near the end, his father had told him, “Be a fine police officer.” Katayama had followed that wish faithfully—though whether fine was the right word was debatable. He suspected his father hadn’t actually expected that much of him. The old man had always said one thing and felt another—he would yell at Harumi not to talk to boys, then send Katayama to tail her to make sure she was surrounded by them, and breathe a sigh of relief when he heard she was.
So, when his father told him to become a fine police officer, it was probably more along the lines of He’ll never actually do it, but I can’t very well die telling my son to go be a kindergarten teacher, can I? Still, when Mitamura—then a police inspector and his father’s colleague—took that last wish seriously and promised, “I’ll take care of the boy,” Katayama got roped in. He could have just said no, but he wasn’t the type to swim against the tide.
Years passed. Harumi had finished junior college and was now working at a department store. Twenty-one already, all grown up.
Guess I’ll have to start thinking about it soon, Katayama mused, staring absentmindedly at the green creeping in along the roadside. She’s not going to keep taking care of me forever. Before long, she’ll want to look after someone else. Then what will I do for dinner? Speaking of which, what’s on the menu for tonight? Probably the leftover stew from yesterday…
Her cooking wasn’t bad, but she always made enough to feed an army. He ended up eating the same thing for days. Stew tonight, stew tomorrow. Great.
The taxi rolled into Fuchu. Almost there, he figured. The car slowed, then stopped.
“Here we are.”
“Thanks.”
Feeling a little guilty about the fare, Katayama paid, took his receipt, and got out.
He had expected some grand campus gate, but there wasn’t anything like that—just a gravel path between trees, leading straight in from the main road. If it weren’t for the modest sign with the university’s name, he could have walked right past it.
The neighborhood was residential but spacious, full of big houses with wide yards—clearly a wealthy area. Best of all, there were no tall buildings, so the blue sky was wide and unbroken.
Katayama felt a little buoyed as he stepped onto the gravel path—but the moment he saw a group of female students approaching, chatting and laughing, that feeling evaporated. He ducked his head just enough to avoid their eyes, keeping an eye on their feet so he wouldn’t walk into them. As their laughter grew nearer, his heart pounded like it was trying to punch its way out of his chest.
Right before they reached each other, the girls’ voices went quiet. They’re looking at me, he thought. The two sides passed, then slowly widened the distance between each other, like rival swordsmen crossing paths. Behind him, he heard the girls burst into laughter.
They’re laughing at me… Like a swordsman sensing killing intent, Katayama could feel the mockery of the young women. Of course, in his case, it was mostly nerves and imagination.
“SORRY TO KEEP you waiting,” the female secretary to the Dean of the Faculty of Letters called out to Katayama, perched on a bench in the hallway. “The dean is back. Please come in.”
“Thank you.”
The secretary didn’t intimidate Katayama in the least. She was a woman, yes, but not young, and there was nothing attractive about her. If anything, she looked like a folded-up futon sporting a pair of glasses.
Katayama walked through the stark little room where her desk sat, reached for the door marked DEAN’S OFFICE, and then paused. Huh? A square about twenty centimeters wide had been cut out of the lower right corner of the door. And not a hole—more like a tiny swinging flap on hinges. Looking back, he saw the door from the hallway was fitted out the same way. Is that supposed to be some kind of good luck charm?
When he stepped into the dean’s office, Katayama instinctively straightened up. The spacious room was carpeted wall to wall, with a seating arrangement—ornate furniture out of a vaguely imperial era—placed imposingly in the middle. Bookshelves covering both side walls were filled with thick, leather-bound volumes with no sign of comics or weeklies. Behind a solid mahogany desk, a gentleman who seemed perfectly at home in this kind of stately room rose to his feet.
“I’m Tomoo Morisaki, Dean of the Faculty of Letters.”
Tall and slender, he circled the desk and approached Katayama with a warm smile. Mid-forties, maybe. He wore what looked like a British suit in subdued tones, impeccably tailored. Ah, so this is what people mean by romance gray, Katayama thought.
“Um—”
“You’re Detective Katayama from the Metropolitan Police, yes? I just spoke with Mitamura on the phone. Thank you for taking the trouble to come. Please, have a seat.”
“I… Yes…” Feeling oddly restless, Katayama lowered himself into an armchair.
“Do you smoke cigars?” Morisaki opened an elaborately crafted cigar case on the table and held one out.
“No, thank you.”
“Is that so? I don’t smoke, either—these are for guests. Just a moment.” He pressed the intercom on his desk. “Miss Oshima, please bring coffee,” he said, then looked back to his guest. “Sorry to have kept you waiting. My last meeting ran a little too long. Why is it those things never end on time?”
Still fidgety, Katayama tried an ambiguous smile. This guy has the wrong idea about me. With this level of courtesy, he must think I’m some big shot… Has no one told him I’m just a regular detective?
“The reason I asked you to come today—well, I imagine you’ve already heard this from Mitamura—but the student who was murdered the other day, Yumiko Kurihara, was a third-year student here. It seems she’d planned an overseas trip for the November holidays, and, to raise spending money, she’d been doing something rather close to prostitution. Shameful to admit, as an educator.”
“I see.”
“But university students are adults, after all. We prefer not to interfere too much in what they do off campus.”
“Indeed.”
“Saying so might have some parents giving me an earful, but I wouldn’t expel a student just because she did that kind of part-time work. If anything, I’d warn her it’s not a good line of business—what with the danger of running into a pervert, or the risk of disease or pregnancy.”
Katayama found himself liking the dean. Intellectuals of this sort often pretended to be champions of the young while in truth clinging to old-fashioned values, but Morisaki came across as different.
“But there is one thing that concerns me,” Morisaki went on, brow furrowing. “Kurihara was killed in the apartment of a girl named Hiroko Misaki, a classmate of hers. It seems Misaki had lent Kurihara the place several times already. And once—”
Just then, the secretary entered with coffee, and Morisaki stopped mid-sentence.
“… Forgive me. I prefer to keep this matter quiet.” When she had left, he took a sip from a very fine porcelain cup and continued. “I’m told Misaki teased her once, saying, ‘You sure find clients easily.’ Kurihara apparently said, ‘Oh, I can get work anytime.’”
“I see…”
Katayama understood what that implied. Someone had been procuring clients for her.
“Did she have ties to the yakuza or something?”
“Mitamura said there didn’t seem to be any such connection. I agree. Get mixed up with gangs, and they take most of the earnings—hardly makes for a profitable gig.”
“I see…”
Who’s the detective here, anyway? Katayama felt a stab of inferiority.
“Now, Misaki heard something else rather interesting,” Morisaki said.
Just then, there was a soft thunk near the door.
“Oh, Holmes, is that you? Come in,” the dean said lightly, as if addressing a friend.
When Katayama turned, a cat poked its head through the tiny door he had wondered about earlier. So, it’s a cat flap. But why is the university keeping cats?
“Holmes is my pet. Come in. Say hello to our guest.”
The creature pushed the door up with her head, eyed Katayama with suspicion, then slipped inside. She was a slender mikeneko—calico in color—commonly believed to bring good luck, with unusual markings. Her back was mostly brown and black, while her underside was white, with her right front leg jet black and her left pure white. Her face was sharp, with a straight, neat nose and youthful whiskers standing stiffly, and was almost evenly divided into white, black, and brown. Maybe because she lived in such a cultivated place, her coat shone like silk.
Now ignoring Katayama entirely, the cat—Holmes—trotted to the mahogany desk, hopped up with a soft thump, shoved some papers aside with her tail, and curled up to sleep.
“Hopeless creature,” Morisaki said with a smile. “My apologies—she’s a female, but not particularly charming.”
“You keep her here?”
“I live on campus, you see. The freedom of bachelorhood—just me and Holmes. She has the run o. . .
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