4 mysteries to read right now and their authors reveal what gives their fiction edge

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Dying to KnowMystery Writers Answer Burning QuestionsIf you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, the author of “Dangerous Liaisons,” is often credited with “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Given our aggrieved times, it’s not surprising how many of this year’s new mysteries explore revenge, but these four recent releases are especially notable.Jackson Alone By Jose AndoSoho Press; 160 pages; $29While English translations of Japanese crime novels have increased in the last 20 years, most still focus on a culturally homogeneous, straight, Japanese society.

Now comes Jose Ando’s “Jackson Alone,” published in Japan in 2022 and translated into English by Kalau Almony, which centers on a mysterious African Japanese massage therapist whose life is upended after his clients and colleagues at a fictional sports conglomerate discover a violent revenge porn featuring someone who looks like him.Despite having no memory of the incident, Jackson joins three other outraged, queer men like him in switching identities to seek out and confront their abusers, who can’t seem to tell them apart.

As the quartet’s scheme plays out, this slim novel becomes less a revenge thriller and more a satiric unmasking of Japanese racism and homophobia which spurs “the four Jacksons” to claim their right to exist authentically without the judgment and stereotyping of the hetero, “pure Japanese” gaze.This bold debut earned “Jackson Alone” wide praise and Japan’s Bungei Prize, awarded to first-time novelists, and makes Ando, now in his early 30s, a writer to watch.

(The author’s answers to the following questions were translated by Almony.)Why was it important for you to tell the stories of queer African Japanese men in your novel? The primary reason was that t...