Natsuo Kirino

Natsuo Kirino is the pen name of Mariko Hashioka, a Japanese novelist born in 1951 in Kanazawa and a leading figure in the recent boom of women writing Japanese detective fiction. The books under this name include Out, a crime thriller, and Grotesque, a dark psychological thriller. Kirino has also written Real World, a contemporary literary novel, and The Goddess Chronicle, a fantasy with magical realism threads.