Around this time, while declaring himself to be one of the practitioners of "honkaku-ha" () or "orthodox school" of mystery fiction-writing, he wrote a trilogy on double-suicide without homicide; of these, the Naoki Prize-nominated "Roppongi Double-Suicide" was appraised as a piece "depicting empty love between a young man and a girl", which entwined "the drama of loss of faith in humanity" into the mystery novel.