Published
by Riverrun,
8 February 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-78648-460-4
8 February 2018.
ISBN: 978-1-78648-460-4
When an air disaster of
unprecedented scale occurs in the North
Kanto Times area, veteran reporter Yuuki and his team are galvanised into
activity. Seventeen years on, Yuuki looks back at that feverish time which
changed his life.
As
he explains in the foreward, this intense novel uses Yokoyama’s own experience
as a journalist investigating this real-life crash. We’re taken behind the
scenes as the journalists make decisions about headlines, and agonise over
using what could be a major scoop, if their informant is reliable. Yuuki’s
intense involvement with his job, and his fatherless childhood, mean he has
difficulty relating to his family, particularly his son, Jun. However, also
seventeen years ago, his climbing friend Anzai was injured in an unexplained
accident, and Yuuki has become closer to his own son through his easier
relationship with Anzai’s son, Rintaro.
In the present day sections, Yuuki and Rintaro are climbing the peak of Tsuitate together. The in-depth protrayal of a Japanese newsroom is fascinating, and Yuuki’s journey through his past absorbing, but it’s hard to call this a crime novel. The secondary storyline of Anzai’s accident is slight, and although the later stages of the novel reflect on the difference between ‘big lives’, which demand news coverages, and equally important ‘little lives’ which get only a paragraph, and on the culpability of JAL, there’s no over-riding criminal storyline.
In the present day sections, Yuuki and Rintaro are climbing the peak of Tsuitate together. The in-depth protrayal of a Japanese newsroom is fascinating, and Yuuki’s journey through his past absorbing, but it’s hard to call this a crime novel. The secondary storyline of Anzai’s accident is slight, and although the later stages of the novel reflect on the difference between ‘big lives’, which demand news coverages, and equally important ‘little lives’ which get only a paragraph, and on the culpability of JAL, there’s no over-riding criminal storyline.
An
absorbing character-driven novel set in a Japanese newsroom at a time of a
real-life air disaster.
------
Reviewer: Marsali
Taylor
Hideo Yokoyama was born in 1957. He worked for twelve years as an investigative
reporter with a regional newspaper north of Tokyo, before becoming one of
Japan's most acclaimed fiction writers. His first novel to be translated into
the English language, Six Four, was a Sunday Times bestseller in hardback and
paperback, became the first Japanese novel to be shortlisted for the CWA
International Dagger, was named in the Crime and Thrillers of 2016 roundups in
each of the Guardian, Telegraph, Financial Times and Glasgow Herald, and has
since been translated into thirteen languages worldwide.
Marsali Taylor grew up near
Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently
a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and
two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is
fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive
dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a
keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of
her local drama group. Marsali also does
a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.
Click on the title to read a review of her recent book Death
in Shetland Waters
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