Inspector Iwata Books In Order

Publication Order of Inspector Iwata Books

Inspector Iwata series by Nicolas Obregon

Author Nicolas Obregon pens the “Inspector Iwata” series of mystery novels. The series began publication in the year 2017, when “Blue Light Yokohama” was released.

The series stars Kosuke Iwata, who starts the series working in Tokyo as a detective. He has a wife, named Cleo, and a daughter, named Nina, who have both died. In other books, he has moved to California and is a private detective. Kosuke grew up between California and Japan and is bi-cultural and bi-lingual. That being said, there is nowhere that he really feels at home.

The inspiration for Kosuke Iwata initially came from Seicho Matsumoto’s “Inspector Imanishi Investigates” series and Eduardo Sacheri’s The Secret in Their Eyes”. Iwata really came screaming into the world because of a photograph that appeared in a newspaper, it was taken in a park in Tokyo. Soshigaya Park, to be precise, just outside the Miyazawa family house, and it was taken on the anniversary of the horrible thing committed on the final day of the year 2000. The sashimi knife-wielding killer has never been caught.

April 17, 2014 in an old Hiroshima hotel room, that he saw the picture of Tokyo Homicide cops bowing before the empty and unavenged home. One of the cops looked to be close to tears and pretty young. It made Obregon wonder about the guy. Obregon feels that this is most likely the day Iwata was born.

It is tough for him to tell where the idea of Iwata came from exactly. He knows it was definitely from somewhere in this tangle of true crime, jet lag, and a sixties Japanese detective novel that Iwata emerged during the pre-dawn on that April morning.

“Blue Light Yokohama” is the first novel in the “Inspector Iwata” series, which was released in the year 2017. Inspector Iwata has just been reinstated to the homicide division and transferred over to a precinct in Tokyo. Now, he faces superiors that do not want him there and gets assigned an uncooperative partner, named Norko Sakai, that would rather work with anybody else.

After the previous detective that was working the case committed suicide, Sakai and Iwata get assigned to investigate an entire family getting slaughtered. It is a brutal murder, one with no clear killer or motive. At the scene, they find some mysterious ritualistic details. An odd incense smell. Black smudges. A symbol, one of a huge black sun. Iwata is unsure what this symbol could mean. He is certain, however, that he knows what the murderer means by it. That the killer is here and they are not done.

While Iwata investigates, it starts to become clear that these killings by the Black Sun Killer are not the first, or last, that are attached to this symbol. He attempts to figure out the black sun symbol’s history, connect it to other killings, and figure out the motive for the crime. The entire time, he finds that he is racing against another clock, as his superiors are attempting to get him removed for good. Haunted by his inability to ever sleep, his own past, and a song called “Blue Light Yokohama”.

The novel offers up a refreshingly unique and bold take on the serial killer story, both with its Japanese characters and setting. With this novel, Obregon shows himself to be a sophisticated and a bright new voice in crime fiction. Some have called the book a highly entertaining and twisty thriller that pulls readers into the unconventional hero’s heart.

“A Whole Island of Friendliness” is a story in the “Inspector Iwata” series, which was released in the year 2018. Kosuke Iwata, once with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, now works as a private investigator in California. He might have left Japan, but the crimes he faces in America are just as perplexing.

A rather threatening Serbian guy claims that his wife is missing. Some mysterious connection to Catalina Island. A little girl that has red hair. A lady that is determined to disappear.

“Sins As Scarlet” is the second novel in the “Inspector Iwata” series, which was released in the year 2018. Iwata’s uneasy peace becomes shattered when a ghost from the past comes calling: Cleo’s mom. She is demanding his help. Meredith Nichol, Cleo’s sister and a transgender sex worker that has been eking an existence out on LA’s Skid Row, has been found dead near some train tracks. There are no clues left behind and the cops do not have much they can go on beyond speculation and prejudice. Quickly she is figured as just yet another lost soul.

Seeing as how Iwata owes Cleo’s mom a blood debt, he has to renounce his simple life under the palm trees and blue skies. He loses himself in an odyssey of missing souls and murder. Fates converge, blood gets spilled, and lives untangle while Iwata finds there is a river of sin that flows through the underbelly in LA, and Mexico’s borderlands, not to mention deep inside of his own past in Tokyo.

“Unknown Male” is the third novel in the “Inspector Iwata” series, which was released in the year 2019. The guy is completely unremarkable, as he wears the same black suit every day and boards the same train to go to work every day. He comes home to his wife and son at night. He has got a secret that he keeps. The man enjoys killing people.

Just weeks remain until the Olympics and the world’s eyes are fixed firmly on Tokyo. At the same time the body of Skye Mackintosh, a young British student, is found at a love hotel.

Tokyo’s Homicide Department would kill for any lead they can get. Their last resort is to get the help of a brilliant ex-detective whose haunted personal life forces him into exile many miles away.

It is not long before Iwata finds the darkness within the neon drenched streets because Skye, just like quite a few others, had secrets of her own. Murder and lies haunt a city where new and old ghosts whisper from the darkest corners and truth is something that remains just out of sight.