[DeepL Translation - needs review] Volume 1 Introduction: The "front" side of the story is a playboy called "Jirokichi Amazakeya". However, his "back" side is a bandit, Rat Boy, who is rumored to be a bandit in Edo. Although he is only a simple thief, he is obsessed with justice and gets involved in cases that don't even cost him a penny. All of this is because Edo is his hometown. He loves more than anything to see the happiness of the people living in this town. Today, he and his sister Ko...
The Nezumi series is historical fiction (apparently Akagawa’s only historical fiction series) – the title character is a robin-hood-ish thief who steals from rich daimyo but is always ready to help out the poor and suffering townspeople of Edo who get caught up in little incidents and come to him for help. All the books are collections of short stories which I think are first published in a magazine and then get collected into book form later. They’re generally mystery plots of one kind or another. Sometimes a victim gets a narrow escape and a happy ending, sometimes they get killed off; sometimes the bad guy is not-so-bad, sometimes Nezumi kills him. Tone is generally fairly light, though as I say people do die.
Akagawa's writing style is typically easy to read and dialogue heavy, so if you're looking for an easy entry into the historical fiction genre this is what I'd recommend -- you will still have to pick up the genre-specific vocab for Edo-period objects and people, and the "samurai-speak" dialogue style that's the accepted way to represent speech in historical fiction, but you can do it in a book that doesn't present any other major language challenges.