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Read this in my reading spree on all things Japan.
I believe that the author used to work as a journalist in Tokyo, and I'm guessing he covered the crime beat. Initially I enjoyed the story well enough. The main character is struggling with the fact that his daughter has run away and that he and his wife don't know if she's okay. The book opens with the two of them viewing a body to see if it is his missing girl. (Spoiler; it's not.)
Then the book grinds into the minutiae of the main character's life as a public relations officer in the police department. He has ended up in PR after working as a detective for years, and a lot of writing is devoted to how PR is perceived by the rest of the department, by reporters, and the political infighting that the character is beginning to engage in so that he can get back to where he wants to be- solving murders. It feels like the author may be mining his own memories, because there is a LOT of detail about who likes whom, who is manipulating whom, and which way the political wind might be blowing at any given time as evidenced by the latest conversation two characters have. This is why I ended up DNF'ing the book. It's a long book at over 500 pages, and I got tired of plowing through the analysis of every single social interaction, which would then be overturned by a new bit of information. It may be an interesting insight into Japanese internal internecine politics, but it grew tedious. There is also a cold case to be solved, but that also felt lost in the details about which newspapers were lead in questions to the police that day, what the press hoped to gain by hardballing the police PR department, and how the main character was whipsawed back and forth between the press and his superior officer.
And finally, this is a very male-POV book. There is one pretty officer in the PR department, and the main character won't let her do anything because he doesn't want her to be taken advantage of by any men. His daughter has gone missing because she has severe body dysphoria, to the point of hating her mother for being attractive, to the point of trying to scratch and disfigure her face. His daughter ran away because she wanted plastic surgery at the age of 16 and her parents refused. The fact that this girl's whole identity revolved around a dysfunctional idea of her appearance bothered me. Maybe this is another Japanese thing I'm not familiar with, but ALL the female characters were described by their appearance and none of them seemed to have much depth. YMMV.
I believe that the author used to work as a journalist in Tokyo, and I'm guessing he covered the crime beat. Initially I enjoyed the story well enough. The main character is struggling with the fact that his daughter has run away and that he and his wife don't know if she's okay. The book opens with the two of them viewing a body to see if it is his missing girl. (Spoiler; it's not.)
Then the book grinds into the minutiae of the main character's life as a public relations officer in the police department. He has ended up in PR after working as a detective for years, and a lot of writing is devoted to how PR is perceived by the rest of the department, by reporters, and the political infighting that the character is beginning to engage in so that he can get back to where he wants to be- solving murders. It feels like the author may be mining his own memories, because there is a LOT of detail about who likes whom, who is manipulating whom, and which way the political wind might be blowing at any given time as evidenced by the latest conversation two characters have. This is why I ended up DNF'ing the book. It's a long book at over 500 pages, and I got tired of plowing through the analysis of every single social interaction, which would then be overturned by a new bit of information. It may be an interesting insight into Japanese internal internecine politics, but it grew tedious. There is also a cold case to be solved, but that also felt lost in the details about which newspapers were lead in questions to the police that day, what the press hoped to gain by hardballing the police PR department, and how the main character was whipsawed back and forth between the press and his superior officer.
And finally, this is a very male-POV book. There is one pretty officer in the PR department, and the main character won't let her do anything because he doesn't want her to be taken advantage of by any men. His daughter has gone missing because she has severe body dysphoria, to the point of hating her mother for being attractive, to the point of trying to scratch and disfigure her face. His daughter ran away because she wanted plastic surgery at the age of 16 and her parents refused. The fact that this girl's whole identity revolved around a dysfunctional idea of her appearance bothered me. Maybe this is another Japanese thing I'm not familiar with, but ALL the female characters were described by their appearance and none of them seemed to have much depth. YMMV.