Points and Lines

A senior official at a government ministry is caught up in a corruption scandal. A receipt from a dining car turns up, and a name is absent from a passenger manifest. Meanwhile, a young man and woman are found dead on a beach, apparently a double suicide. Nothing obviously ties these events together, but one dogged investigator refuses to accept the surface explanation and works to uncover how the living and the dead are connected. The novel is a Japanese crime story by Seicho Matsumoto, a writer known for mysteries that examine social problems.