Reviews

Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama

sophiaxlm's review against another edition

4.0

前五分之四：警察的职场日常与其他社畜并没有什么分别，甚至可能更甚。上级与上级、下属与上级、警察与记者、前警察与现任警察……没几个人工作和生活得顺心，有正义感的人好像都过得比较艰难，偶然的反抗之后大概只有更多的妥协。几乎以为“史上最凶恶绑架撕票事件”要变成个黑色幽默的时候，最后五分之一处出现的另一起绑架案一面让人打起精神，一面偷偷地但合情理地把之前的一些不起眼的伏笔联系起来，给出了意外又情理之中的答案——但不是所有问题的答案。跟横山秀夫之前的以警察为主角的故事一样，是可以当做非类型小说来看的作品。

theciz's review

challenging dark informative mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I’m not sure why this is listed as a thriller, as it’s really not, more of a slow burn bureaucratic intrigue, with a cold case mystery in the background. Luckily, I love that kind of thing, and I have a good grounding in Japanese police culture and relations with the press from reading Lady Joker relatively recently. A tolerance for overly earnest speeches about organisational pride also required. 

The main character is a little all over the place, but I think it’s also quite realistic, as he’s trying to navigate a hostile hierarchy while having a low grade mental breakdown. The last minute twist in the mystery story was the first that surprised me in a while, which made a nice change. The last 80 pages are a real whirlwind, while the rest is pretty slow burn.

patwolf's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

kneessa's review

3.0

2018 Popsugar - A book by an author of a different ethnicity than you
2018 Read Harder - A book of genre fiction in translation

technomage's review

3.0

I was expecting a Japanese version of a detective story about a kidnap which is what I got in spades the only thing being Japanese police procedure seems so radically different from the western stories/series I've read/seen. It took a far bit of reading and concentration to get into this book but it paid off in the end with the result I found this a rewarding and quite moving read. I would recommend it but be prepared to work a bit at it.

gwithiantowans's review

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Very nicely written book which holds the reader, and has some very fine emotional observations amid the drama. It was long though - I thought the office politics could have been trimmed a bit in order to hold to the criminal narrative more. Speeds up nicely towards the end! Despite the character list at the front I got a bit lost who everyone was, so it might be worth keeping your own list. 

grubrednuf's review

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Mystery. Thriller. The plot was magical, amazing how it all came together. Truly some twists and turns. Who knew office politics could be so intriguing. But what's truly holding this story back is honestly the translation. I regularly read translated texts so I'm comfortable with it but the word choices and turn of phrase throughout took me out of the story sometimes. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Child death, Police brutality, and Grief

Moderate: Stalking

blevins's review

3.0

Too long!!!!

lmasood's review

1.0

Very hard to read. Even when paying close attention, all the characters names are so similar I could not keep the characters straight. The "action" is extremely slow-moving and in the end, after reading over 200 pages, I gave up.

hooliaquoolia's review

4.0

I'm hesitant to label this a mystery novel, even though there are several mysteries in the plot. It vaguely aligns with what the Anglophone world has termed a "literary mystery" although there may not be a corollary in Japanese. It's more concerned with the systems in which these mysteries occur than solely with the mysteries themselves, and is more of an atmospheric read than a solved puzzle. That being said, this is mostly certainly a Japanese novel, and doesn't follow plot rhythms that are most familiar to readers of Anglophone mysteries. Maybe if I had grown up on Japanese novels like this, I wouldn't have minded the sheer amount of time spent on things like three bureaucrats preparing for a press conference, but as it was, there was a bit of a drag in the middle for me. As much as I enjoyed some of the plodding bits where the protagonist muses on the culture around him, Anglophone readers used to constant crime, corruption, and violence will not understand why the author spends hundreds of pages on a missing memo.