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  • Published: 28 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9781405940252
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download

Unknown Male

'Doesn’t get any darker or more twisted than this’ Sunday Times Crime Club




Inspector Kosuke Iwata returns to Japan after ten years to confront the ghosts of his past, and catch a dangerous killer

With just weeks to go before the Olympics and the world's eyes firmly fixed on Tokyo the body of young British student, Skye Mackintosh, is discovered in a love hotel.

Tokyo's Homicide Department enlists the help of Kosuke Iwata. But it isn't long before he discovers the darkness in the neon drenched streets as Skye, like so many others, had her own secrets.

Lies and murder haunt a city where old ghosts and new whisper from its darkest of corners and the truth is always just out of sight

  • Published: 28 November 2019
  • ISBN: 9781405940252
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download

About the author

Nicolas Obregon

British born of a Spanish father and a French mother, Nicolás Obregón grew up between London and Madrid. As a travel writer, Nicolás has had an extensive experience of Japan, but the beginning of his fascination with the country came from watching Japanese cartoons as a young boy. The inspiration for Blue Light Yokohama is easy to mark. During his first trip to Japan, Nicolás came across an article about a real-life crime which was to haunt him. Sixteen years after this atrocity, the case remains unsolved. Nicolás Obregón is a graduate of the acclaimed Birkbeck Creative Writing Masters course and a former bookseller for Waterstones.

Also by Nicolas Obregon

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Praise for Unknown Male

Praise for Nicolás Obregón

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Harrowing and gripping. An astute police procedural . . . Switching between LA, Mexico and Tokyo both Iwata's present and past are cleverly interwoven in a truly heart-rending climax

Daily Express

Fresh and convincing . . . the dialogue is worthy of the great chronicler of LA's dark side, Raymond Chandler. But really, Obregon's writing has a unique flavour all of its own, wherever his books are set

Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express

Sins as Scarlet is a searing LA crime story, as poetic as it is brutal, as tender as it is disturbing

Tim Weaver

Thanks to the excellent Iwata, you get a gripping mystery with a real conscience

Sunday Sport

In the heady tradition of Raymond Chandler and Michael Connelly, Sins as Scarlet lays bare the bruised heart and broken soul of Los Angeles. Extraordinary stuff: a diabolically clever police procedural, a wrenching character study, and a merciless chronicle of a city in decay. I'm awestruck.

A. J. Finn, author of international bestseller, THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

A dark, brutal ride through the underbelly of LA

ANTHONY HOROWITZ

Masterpiece - that's the only way to describe Sins as Scarlet. Obregón's brilliant novel is, at once, a classic noir, a psychological thriller and a riveting examination-sometimes dark, sometime moving to the point of tears--of life in a less-than-angelic Los Angeles

JEFFERY DEAVER

Evocative, perceptive writing

Sunday Time Crime Club

This bleak, richly descriptive and haunting thriller walks of the wild side of Los Angeles

Peterborough Telegraph

A brace of cutting-edge themes are threaded into the abrasive narrative . . . It is a combustible mix, but as in the earlier Blue Light Yokohama, the author has the full measure of his difficult material. With his vividly evoked Mexican and LA settings [he] delivers a pacey, page-turning thriller, but the underlying seriousness gives real texture. Iwata is a richly drawn, conflicted hero, and this is another savage journey into the dark heart of America

Barry Forshaw, Financial Times

Obregón keeps the unpredictable plot of Sins As Scarlet churning with myriad surprises that are grounded in believability

Mail Online

Japan-set noir doesn't get any darker or more twisted than this

Sunday Times Crime Club

Obregón is the most atmospheric of writers and evokes local landscapes and moods with diamond-like as well as dreamy precision and the three simultaneous plots advance with clockwork-like and relentless efficiency and won't allow the reader a moment's respite. A stunning achievement that should raise the author's profile to crime's Premier league or there is no justice in this world

Crime Time, Book of the Month

The plotting is impressively done. It's a brilliant novel and a fitting end to a brilliant trilogy

NB Magazine

An outstanding novel from start to finish, possibly the best book I've read this year. An entrancing thriller that lures you into the dark secrets of the neon streets of Tokyo. Riveting

The Courier, Book of the Week