Jirō Akagawa

Jirō Akagawa (赤川次郎) (born February 29, 1948), is a Japanese novelist born in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.

Biography
Best known for his humorous mysteries, Akagawa's first novel, Ghost Train, was published in 1976 and went on to win the annually granted All Yomimono New Mystery Writers' Prize by Bungeishunju, a Japanese literary publishing company. Other works of his, Incident in the Bedroom Suburb and Voice from Heaven, were later made into anime, while Sailor Fuku to Kikanju was made into a popular live action movie. His most recognized works to date pertain to his Mike-neko (or Tortoiseshell Cat) Holmes series. He is extremely prolific; as of August, 2006, he had written more than 480 novels in the course of his thirty year career, over 300 million individual published volumes.