First Thoughts: Journey Under the Midnight Sun

IN 1973, with the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East threatening worldwide oil prices, a pawnbroker is found murdered and robbed in an abandoned building in Osaka.

As Detective Sasagaki probes for clues, suspicion falls on several people, including the victim’s wife, an employee in the pawnshop, an almost destitute female customer that he’d been known to visit, and the customer’s lover.

As days turn into weeks, nobody is caught for the crime, and eventually the police are forced to shelf the investigation, though Sasagaki keeps the case alive in his mind.