After twenty years in the Tokyo police, Inspector Aoki knows the ‘beeping of the excrement detector in his brain was a definite warning that shit was coming down the freeway’. His declaration is indicative of this convoluted plot. Aoki, after seventeen months heading an excruciating investigation into the corrupt ‘Fatman’, a high-profile government official, discovers that his case has been irrevocably shut down. Quicker than you can shout ‘yakuza’, his journalist associate is murdered, his father dies of heart failure, his wife commits suicide and Aoki is placed under observation in a psychiatric hospital. Suspended from duty, he is sent to recover at the Kamakura Inn, an exclusive mountain retreat outside the city. But his sojourn is far from therapeutic, and Aoki is soon wrestling both the temptation of beautiful geisha and the danger of a bloodthirsty murderer running loose through the guest house.