Which Japanese author wrote 'The Tokyo Zodiac Murders'?

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders was written by Soji Shimada, a Japanese mystery novelist who made his literary debut with the book in 1981. Its original Japanese title is Senseijutsu Satsujin Jiken, and it became the opening novel of the Detective Mitarai series.

Shimada was born in Fukuyama, Hiroshima, in 1948 and studied commercial art before working as a musician, freelance writer, and dump-truck driver. The novel was shortlisted for the Edogawa Rampo Prize, one of Japan’s best-known honors for mystery fiction, helping establish Shimada as an important writer of so-called honkaku, or “authentic,” puzzle mysteries.

The plot begins with a bizarre 1936 murder and an astrological plan involving the creation of a perfect woman called Azoth. Decades later, astrologer Kiyoshi Mitarai investigates the unsolved case with his friend Kazumi Ishioka. Readers are explicitly challenged to solve the mystery from clues supplied in the text, including diagrams and crime-scene details. The first English translation appeared in 2004.