If you’ve never heard of U.S. mystery writer Sujata Massey before, you really should pick up some of her books and start reading.

Based in Baltimore, but having spent some valuable time in Tokyo in the early 1990s (and returning for research purposes at least once a year), Massey has created a Japanese-American amateur sleuth named Rei Shimura — Massey is herself part German, part Asian Indian — who solves whodunnit mysteries in a continuing series of books, starting with “The Salaryman’s Wife”, first published in 1997. This debut novel was followed by six more books: “Zen Attitude”, “The Flower Master”, “Floating Girl”, “The Bride’s Kimono”, “The Samurai’s Daughter”, and “The Pearl Diver.”

Coming next, in October, is the latest in the Rei Shimura series, titled “The Typhoon Lover.”

You might never have noticed this before, but the 7-Eleven store logo that can be seen just about everywhere in Japan has one very interesting feature — The word “eleven” in the logo is capitalized like this: ELEVEn . . . with the final letter, the “n”, lowercased.

I wonder why?

If anyone knows why, please click the Comments link below and let us know.