However, her fiction has been mirrored by reality with an increasing number of bizarre murders in Japan such as the woman who in 2007 murdered her husband, dismembered his body, and dumped the parts across Tokyo. In fact, one male radio host refused to talk with her because of the fact she wrote about a husband being murdered by his own wife. Many critics challenged and criticized Kirino for her storylines, especially for Out, by saying women should only be writing love stories. For influential books from her childhood, Kirino cites Two Years' Vacation, The Three Musketeers, and Little Women as favorites. In spite of writing in stories in the genre, Kirino does not particularly like mysteries. A further novel, In is scheduled for publication in 2013. So far, four of her novels ( Out, Grotesque, Real World, and The Goddess Chronicle, the last of which was written for the Canongate Myth Series) have been translated into English. In addition, Kirino received the 1993 Edogawa Rampo Prize for mystery fiction for her debut novel, Kao ni Furikakaru Ame (Rain Falling on My Face), and the 1999 Naoki Prize for her novel Yawarakana hoho (Soft Cheeks). She is most famous for her 1997 novel, Out, which received the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, Japan's top mystery award, and was a finalist (in English translation) for the 2004 Edgar Award.

To date, she has written several short story collections and many novels, and is now one of Japan's most popular writers.

She then turned her focus towards writing mystery novels in the early 1990s. She also did not have a passion for writing romance novels and wanted to concentrate on works focusing on the psychological aspect of crimes. However, these types of novels were not popular in Japan, so she found it difficult to make a living while writing them. Kirino began her writing career in 1984 when she first started off composing novels in the romantic genre. It wasn't until she was in her thirties that she began to seriously think about becoming a writer, and it wasn't until her forties that she became popular as a writer. She soon discovered it wasn't right for her and just before her thirtieth birthday she started taking scriptwriting classes. For example, not knowing what she wanted to do in life, Kirino began working at the Iwanami Hall movie theater in her early twenties. She earned a law degree in 1974 from Seikei University, and she dabbled in many fields of work before settling on being a writer. Kirino married in 1975 and had a daughter in 1981. Kirino has lived in many different cities, including her current residence, Tokyo. She has two brothers, one who is six years older and one who is five years younger. Natsuo Kirino ( 桐野夏生, Kirino Natsuo) (born October 7, 1951, in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture) is the pen name of Mariko Hashioka, a Japanese novelist and a leading figure in the recent boom of female writers of Japanese detective fiction.

Out natsuo