Translated from Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood
Published by Penguin, 1971, 149 pages. Original version published in 1958.

The bodies of a man and a woman are found on the beach on Kyushu. The way the bodies are lying, and the empty bottle of orange juice near them—which was found to contain cyanide—seems to point to a lovers’ suicide pact.

The man, Kenichi Sayama, worked in Ministry X, and the woman, Toki, was a waitress in a restaurant. Since Ministry X is under investigation for corruption, the police conclude that Sayama had committed suicide to protect his boss and had persuaded his lover to join him. Two waitresses who worked with Toki saw her boarding a train in Tokyo with Sayama. The women were seeing off one of the restaurant’s clients, Tatsuo Yasuda, who was taking another train.

Detective Jūtarō Torigai is not convinced that it is suicide. He cannot stop worrying about a receipt found in Sayama’s pocket for dinner for one at the train’s restaurant car. If Sayama and Toki were a couple, why didn’t she join him? Were they really a couple or just two people who happened to know one another?

Because of Sayama’s job in the ministry, the Tokyo police are interested in the case and send Inspector Kiichi Mihara to investigate. Sayama was the police’s key witness in the case against the ministry, and without him, they have nothing. Torigai shares his hunches with Kiichi, who takes over the investigation.

Was Yasuda involved in the deaths? Did he deliberately bring the two waitresses to the station so they could witness Toki and Sayama boarding the train to Kyushu? It seems that way, since they were on platform 13 and the train Toki was taking was on platform 15. There is only a window of four minutes when there is a clear view across platform 14, without any trains blocking the view.

But what interest would Yasuda have in the deaths of the couple? And in any case, when they died, Yasuda was at the other end of the country—there were witnesses who could attest to his presence there.

What follows is a complex story, where everything hinges on train timings. The book is only 149 pages, but I wouldn’t have minded it stretching a bit longer. I liked the characters, especially the two detectives, and the plot was twisty and kept me interested, although I did try not to finish the book too quickly!

Seichō Matsumoto is a well-known post-war Japanese author, and this is one of his classics. The original title in Japanese translates as Points and Lines, which makes more sense than Tokyo Express. The cover, appropriately, is a detail from a poster for Japan Government Railways.