A Tiny Speck Of Black And Then Nothing

A dazzling literary suspense novel that plunges readers into the nightlife of Osaka, where a young hostess's disappearance initiates a dangerous pursuit through the city's criminal underworld

'Exquisitely written and utterly compelling' SUSAN BARKER

'The soul of a stylish mystery and the pace of an old-fashioned thriller' MOHAMMED HANIF

'Elegant, edgy and cinematic' EMMA CLAIRE SWEENEY

Anna has never met anyone like the enigmatic Loll: a British hostess at the Moonglow bar, in the Japanese city of Osaka. While Anna teaches bored students by day, Loll passes the nights in smoky, dim-lit rooms where she pours men's drinks, lights their cigarettes and laughs playfully at their jokes.

With her blonde wigs, shimmering dresses and bejewelled nails, Loll cuts a mesmerising figure. But her skin bears unexplained bruises beneath its glittering facade, and Anna's concern slowly begins to grow. She is troubled by the secret of the carved jade stone necklace that her glamorous new friend seems determined to protect; the mysterious identity of Loll's best client with shadowy links to the city's underworld crime bosses; and the sight Anna witnesses one afternoon: Loll teetering alone on the edge of a railway track, caught in the deafening rush as a train hurtles by.

Unlike Anna, who has come to Osaka to learn more about her half-Japanese heritage, Loll seems to have no clear reason for being there and no easily discernible past. And so when she suddenly disappears, there are only the barest of clues as to where she might have gone. But, desperate to find her friend, Anna refuses to give up. Soon she is thrown onto a trail that will take her into the darkest corners of the neon-choked metropolis - hidden, forbidden places from which those who know the city best warn her to stay away.

Author bio:
Emily Midorikawa is the author of Out of the Shadows: Six Visionary Victorian Women in Search of a Public Voice, and the coauthor of A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf (written with Emma Claire Sweeney).

Emily is a winner of the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. Her journalism has appeared in publications including the Paris Review, TIME, The Times (of London) and the Washington Post. She teaches on the writing programme at New York University London.