The Unlikely Detective And The Stolen Stamps Enigma

Number 4 in the Matt Kelly series starts slowly—unless philately is your thing—but quickly picks up the pace, leading to a vintage Kelly climax that evokes the classic movie "Cape Fear." Kelly is reluctant to get involved in an aging stamp dealer's problems—inexplicably, a client's stamp collection worth millions of yen has been switched with one containing far less valuable material—but the dealer is an old friend of Kelly's friend and sometimes colleague Miller, and, in the end, Miller usually gets what he wants. It doesn't hurt that one of the stamp dealer's assistants is a five foot buxom doll called Masako and is nearly as fit as the legendarily flat-bellied Kelly. As Miller cogitates over how a bank locked-room switch could have been engineered, Kelly noses around the client, a supposed financial investment advisor, who turns out to be a money launderer for the Sumiyoshi-kai yakuza. Series fans will immediately see that the investment advisor/yakuza does more than the laundry—the advisor's own clients clearly indicate that Kelly has found his adversary. No one is quite what they seem this time around—Masako and the investment advisor/yakuza, especially—and it takes Kelly quite a while to put the pieces together. Cut to a rented cabin cruiser, heading to Oshima Island, as Kelly lays in wait for a predawn visit from the investment advisor/yakuza on his way, just like in the classic movie "Cape Fear," to settle scores once and for all.