Six four

566 pages

English language

Published Aug. 1, 2017 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:
978-0-374-26551-9
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
946693776

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4 stars (6 reviews)

"The nightmare no parent could endure. The case no detective could solve. The twist no reader could predict. For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter's kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. They would never see their daughter again. For the fourteen years that followed, the Japanese public listened to the police's apologies. They would never forget the botched investigation that became known as Six Four. They would never forgive the authorities for their failure. For one week in late 2002, the press officer attached to the police department in question confronted an anomaly in the case. He could never imagine what he would uncover. He would never have looked if he'd known what he would find. "--

2 editions

Japanese police procedural

3 stars

Struggled to finish this one. I read that it was made into a couple of movies, which makes sense, because it's as much a police procedural as anything I've seen on the screen. Ups and downs with that, I think — the titular murder mystery is a vehicle for cultural and bureaucratic encounters, but it's a slow-moving beast. Back cover blurbs make it out to be a page-turner, but I struggled.

Lots to recommend here if you're interested Japanese (or maybe Tokyo-specific?) family and institutional hierarchies, less so if you're looking for a crime story that hooks with plot.

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rated it

5 stars
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rated it

4 stars
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5 stars
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rated it

3 stars
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rated it

3 stars

Subjects

  • Kidnapping
  • Police
  • Investigation
  • Cold cases (Criminal investigation)
  • Fiction

Places

  • Japan
  • Tokyo