Chapter 8Along the main street of Jinbocho, store windows displayed journals, textbooks, magazines, manga, chapbooks, maps and prints—each store with its own specialty. Library carts, fold-up tables and string-tied stacks of used books spilled onto the sidewalk. Everywhere, people stood reading. Sakaguchi stopped in front of one book propped in a window that would have saved him years as a beat cop—a preparation manual for the detective exam. If he had come to Jinbocho, if he had known such a book existed, he might not have failed the exam six straight years, finally passing the seventh time, never knowing why.
Sakaguchi walked on to the corner of the street and stopped under a ginkgo tree that spread over a large carved wood signboard: “Endo Brothers Bookstore 1889.” The sign’s gold leaf
