‘An accomplished crime series which gives an insight into Japanese culture... The Inspector Inoue thrillers grip and inform.’ Thomas Waugh Japan 2018. One spring night Mayumi Ikeuchi is late leaving the city nightclub where she works. Mayumi meets a stranger who offers to share a cab to Fujikawa. She is found in a park, stabbed to death, the next morning. There is no shortage of suspects. Inspector Inoue takes it personally. Fujikawa is his turf. He wants women to feel safe. But domestic violence is on the rise in Fujikawa. Inoue enlists the help of a professional profiler to identify the culprit in Mayumi’s murder. When his own sister-in-law is targeted in an attack, Inoue is in a race against time to catch the killer before he strikes again. Lea O’Harra lived in Japan for thirty-six years, working as an English professor at a private university in western Japan. 'Lea O'Harra offers us a whodunnit set in a Japan labouring under the weight of cultural imperialism, a country where the characters find that their friends and lovers are really strangers - and imperfect ones at that...' Nick Sweet, author of the Inspector Velázquez series 'With her deep knowledge of Japanese culture, superb writing, and sensitivity to human foibles. O’Harra has crafted a cross-cultural whodunnit sure to please Japanophiles and mystery lovers alike.' Suzanne Kamata, author of Losing Kei 'Imperfect Strangers is a novel that probes the society in which its characters live. As such I commend it highly and wish it well on its voyage across the choppy seas of international crime fiction.' Paul Johnston, author of the Alex Mavros series