When Kiriko Yanagida first came to Otsuka's law offices, she had only a familial conviction of her brother's innocence despite his confessing to the murder. To the high-profile (and high priced) lawyer Otsuka, this small-town girl's belief was nothing more than naive hope, so he sent her away, advising her to find a local lawyer or something. Now, Kiriko plots to avenge her brother -- entirely pro bono .

Seicho Matsumoto made a name for himself as a writer of suspense novels that were accesible to all kinds of readers, but it was his historical novel The Ogura Diary Chronicles that earned his the 28th Akutagawa Prize, the Japanese equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. His other historical novels include List of the Homeless, and Drawings of the Heat Haze. The popular Japanese TV show Black Leather Notebook was based on his novel of the same name, and several of his detective fiction works have been published in the U.S.