There’s more politics than mayhem here, but fans of hard-boiled fiction will enjoy seeing how Japanese cop shops work.
Linked novellas from the dean of Japanese noir.
Yokoyama knows his way around a police station, as these linked novellas, reminiscent of Janwillem van de Wetering’s Amsterdam Cops series, suggest. Yet a Japanese police station is a place that’s thoroughly politicized and bureaucratic. A constant presence in each of the stories is a personnel director named Shinji Futawatari, whom everyone fears because he has unusually broad powers to reassign people to different jobs, elevating some and demoting others. “Fortunately,” writes Yokoyama, “it was a particular strength of Personnel to nurture posts that were both impenetrable and obscure, enabling transfers that were recognizable from the inside as punitive yet justifiable to the outside as existing to 'strengthen Department X or Y.' ” Futawatari’s life is made miserable by a 42-year veteran detective who refuses to be shuffled from his post for reasons that, a detective ventures, have something to do with “all that other shit.” The veteran cop, who could teach Bartleby the Scrivener a thing or two, won’t talk about it or consider a transfer, leaving Futawatari frustrated and powerless. In the next story, Futawatari—who’d been named a superintendent at the age of 40 and is nicknamed the “ace,” not for his skills but as “a reference to the trump card he held”—is a peripheral player in a cat-and-mouse game in which an anonymous cop is blackmailing a senior officer. The same threat plays in the fourth story, with a politician threatening to expose another top cop, sending the prefecture scrambling to dig up dirt. When Masaki Tsuge, who works in the Prefectural Police Headquarters, pleads on his boss’s behalf, the politico answers, smugly, “If you’re this good at kowtowing, you might want to consider running for election.” The story that precedes it is the most elusive, in which a promising woman sergeant in a deeply sexist enterprise—as Yokoyama writes, “Questions of gender aside, she was exactly the type of officer the force needed”—simply disappears from her station one day.
There’s more politics than mayhem here, but fans of hard-boiled fiction will enjoy seeing how Japanese cop shops work.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-374-23704-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Come for the forensics, stay for the nonhumans.
A Christmas bout between Kay Scarpetta and the Phantom Slasher.
But first, Scarpetta, Virginia’s chief medical examiner, has to figure out how software designer Rowdy O’Leary died. Fished from the Potomac River on Christmas Eve six years after a hit-and-run driver left him permanently disabled and a week after he plunked down the cash for a pricey emerald ring, he fell off his fishing perch and drowned—or did he? Scarpetta’s examination of his body is cut short by two disturbing developments: the discovery of an unidentified woman’s remains buried on the grounds of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital, and celebrity TV reporter Dana Diletti’s report that the red-eyed ghost associated with the Slasher’s three murders has floated through the window of her home. She’s got video, too, and the apparition looks real and scary. The final blow to Scarpetta’s plans for a Christmas getaway with her husband, Secret Service forensic psychologist Benton Wesley, is an attack on an Alexandria home that kills Mercy psychiatrist Georgine Duvall, who used to treat Scarpetta’s niece, Lucy Farinelli, and nearly kills graduate student Zain Willard, White House intern and nephew of presidential candidate Sen. Calvin Willard. This time the Slasher’s ghost has been spotted on the scene by none other than Pete Marino, head of investigations for the medical examiner’s office and Scarpetta’s longtime sidekick. Cornwell’s use of Robbie, Zain’s robotic dog, and Janet, Lucy’s AI companion, integrates the futuristic elements she favors more successfully than in her recent outings. But the solutions to all these mysteries will leave fans of the venerable franchise pursing their lips rather than gasping in awe.
Come for the forensics, stay for the nonhumans.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781538773963
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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