Natsuo Kirino is a Japanese mystery writer. I am about 2/3rds of the way through her 1997 novel, “Out” and am enjoying it immensely. The story concerns a group of four women in a lunch box factory who attempt to cover up a crime. The details of the story are gruesome but Kirino is inside the heads of all her characters making their actions logical if not astonishing.

She has just come out with a translation of a newer novel called “Grotesque,” which was reviewed in an NPR segment.

This was the first I had heard of her.