A haunting psychological crime novel, The Earthquake Bird is a debut which has caused an international sensation pre-publication."Early this morning, several hours before my arrest, I was woken up by an earth tremor. I mention the incident not to suggest that there was a connection - that somehow the fault lines in my life came crashing together in the form of couple of policemen - for in Tokyo we have a quake like this every month. I am simply relating the sequence of events as it happened. It has been an unusual day and I would hate to forget anything..."So begins this chilling novel set in Japan which reveals a murder on its first page and takes its readers into the mind of the chief suspect, Lucy Fly - a young, vulnerable English girl living and working in Tokyo as a translator. As Lucy is interrogated by the police she reveals her past to the reader, and it is a past which is dangerously ambiguous and compromising. A novel inbued with the chill of The Wasp Factory and the shock of The Sculptress, this is the debut of a major new talent.