A screen writer by trade Hisashi Nozawa has been writing for TV and film since 1983. He was also known for having written the script for Beat Takeshi's directorial debut - Violent Cop. But he would turn to the world of prose around the year 2000. In 1999 he won the coveted Edogawa Rampo Award for Mystery Fiction. He would then write Deep Red in 2000. The book was an instant hit for Kodansha and quickly was fast tracked to become a mass-media project. Unfortnately before the project would be completed in 2005, Nozawa committed suicide in his office in 2004. He would eventually write more than three dozen TV series, more than a dozen movies, and around fifteen novels before he died at age 44.