'With its stopwatch timing locked-room murder and perplexing abundance of alibis.... Readers
are in store for plenty of surprises' Wall Street Journal A popular young girl disappears
without a trace her skeletal remains discovered three years later in the ashes of a burned-out
house. There's a suspect and compelling circumstantial evidence of his guilt but no concrete
proof. When he isn't indicted he returns to mock the girl's family. And this isn't the first
time he's been suspected of the murder of a young girl nearly twenty years ago he was tried
and released due to lack of evidence. Chief Inspector Kusanagi of the Homicide Division of the
Tokyo Police worked both cases. The neighborhood in which the murdered girl lived is famous for
an annual street festival featuring a parade with entries from around Tokyo and Japan. During
the parade the suspected killer dies unexpectedly. His death is suspiciously convenient but
the people with all the best motives have rock solid alibis. Chief Inspector Kusanagi turns
once again to his college friend Physics professor and occasional police consultant Manabu
Yukawa known as Detective Galileo to help solve the string of seemingly impossible murders.
