Some years back, I was reading a Nero Wolfe mystery. Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were having a talk in the kitchen. There was (for some reason) a baseball game on the radio, and someone pointed out that Atlanta was playing the Mets. Reading that little aside took me right out of the story. Why? Because it seemed like such an anachronism. The Mets came into being in 1962; the Braves wouldn’t move to Atlanta until 1966. But the first of the Nero Wolfe books was published in 1934, and even though Rex Stout continued to write for decades after that, there’s a certain timelessness about this series that seemed like a bad fit for the Space Age.

Being a fictional detective is a tough gig as it is, but one of the compensations is that you don’t age over time. You’re basically in a sort of fictional stasis. How much does Sherlock Holmes change throughout the years? Hercule Poirot? Encyclopedia Brown? Lennie Briscoe? As a fictional detective, all you’re expected to do is solve mysteries and make the occasional wisecrack.

"THE KAMOGAWA FOOD DETECTIVES is an outstanding choice if you like Japanese food, food in general, or mysteries that don’t involve dead bodies, poison, vampires or stray cats."

This is what bothered me initially about THE KAMOGAWA FOOD DETECTIVES, a slim collection of six detective stories. The personnel of the agency are the principal, Nagare Kamogawa, a retired police detective and proprietor of a neighborhood diner in Kyoto, and his daughter, Koishi, a thirty-something part-time waitress who doubles as the intake specialist for the detective agency. The agency promises to “find your food,” which means they will track down the recipe of whatever food you enjoyed in your youth but have forgotten how to make.

The conceit is perfectly suited for the short detective story, and author Hisashi Kashiwai describes the sumptuous dishes served up at the nondescript diner with care and detail and what one can only think of as passionate, devoted love. And it’s perfectly reasonable, in the context of the fictional detective story, that the characters don’t change --- even if you think that a change might do them good.

The realization that poor Koishi is not going to grow, change or find a romantic partner --- or really do much of anything but guzzle wine and apologize for her existence --- is the necessary precondition for enjoying THE KAMOGAWA FOOD DETECTIVES. If there’s a central, overarching theme in the book, it's that people’s relationships with food are always more complicated than you might think. Food is important and necessary in a lot of ways, but it also serves all manner of complex emotional needs.

The six people who wander into the Kamogawa Diner during the course of this book are not really what you would call foodies, although they are treated to what sounds like an outstanding repast on their first visit. (One visitor gets sea bream, glazed eggplant, marinated shad, grilled eel, abalone, fish-paste noodles, smoked mackerel and pickled vegetables.) By contrast, what the various clients want are, to the extent that I understand things, variations on Japanese comfort food. (One of these people asks for what turns out to be, literally, spaghetti and hot dogs with ketchup, which further research reveals to be a real thing. It’s basically a Japanese imitation of a specific type of C-ration that post-war American occupation troops ate.) They’re looking for comfort food --- and end up paying the detectives to get it --- because, well, obviously, they want a degree of comfort that they can’t get any other way.

THE KAMOGAWA FOOD DETECTIVES is an outstanding choice if you like Japanese food, food in general, or mysteries that don’t involve dead bodies, poison, vampires or stray cats. But seriously, if there are more short stories coming our way, there really needs to be a little spark of romance for Koishi. Please?