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A review by gothicgunslinger
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
4.0
Probably more like 3.5 stars.
I liked a lot about this book; as a crime drama, it's rather outside the mold, and the many twists and turns kept me reading. I went in assuming one set of circumstances would take place – cracking a cold case, maybe simultaneously tracking down a missing person. It quickly subverts these expectations and becomes a pretty fascinating study on the internal politics of the Japanese police. Mikami as the somewhat hapless honest cop confronted with a system that seems more concerned with its own image than actually solving crimes was pretty satisfying to read about.
The novel functions also kind of a crash course on the Japanese law enforcement. I found myself looking up more information on the National Police Agency, and how the whole hierarchy is set up, to get a better understanding of why certain things were going on. Apparently, unlike in the United States that has separate police forces for each state, and then a separate agency that handles federal manners, Japan has a more centralized force, with personnel and policy decisions coming from high up in Tokyo. The book sure doesn't hold your hand in regards to this information. It's deeply immersed in Japanese culture and assumes the reader knows a lot of this information (unsurprisingly, considering it's a translation of something originally meant for a Japanese audience). People who don't like to do legwork to understand their fiction might be annoyed, but I found this some of the most interesting parts of my reading experience.
I also loved Mikami and Minako's struggle to deal with Ayumi's disappearance. It was quite nuanced and very poignant, especially considering the "hard-boiled detective" angle of the majority of the narrative.
Unfortunately, there were certain obstacles that kept me from loving this book. First, it was a bit too long. There were parts where I would be reading with interest, but as soon as we hit another section where Mikami simply sits and reasons through anything and everything in his head, I began wondering how many pages were left until the next chapter. Perhaps this is cultural as well – I've noticed Japanese fiction to be more cerebral than your average English narrative, but as a "fast-paced" suspense novel rounding out at 566 pages, a lot of the longer internal monologues could have been cut down.
The other big downside is that there are a lot of characters, and a bunch of them have extremely similar names. Mikami, Minako, Mikumo, Mizuki... and that's just one batch. I spent the majority of the novel assuming this had to be something lost in translation, that in Japanese these spellings weren't nearly interchangeble so I could barely tell who was who.
Overall, a good read, but not a great one. Still, worth it for the cultural immersion lesson, whch is probably why I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 3.
I liked a lot about this book; as a crime drama, it's rather outside the mold, and the many twists and turns kept me reading. I went in assuming one set of circumstances would take place – cracking a cold case, maybe simultaneously tracking down a missing person. It quickly subverts these expectations and becomes a pretty fascinating study on the internal politics of the Japanese police. Mikami as the somewhat hapless honest cop confronted with a system that seems more concerned with its own image than actually solving crimes was pretty satisfying to read about.
The novel functions also kind of a crash course on the Japanese law enforcement. I found myself looking up more information on the National Police Agency, and how the whole hierarchy is set up, to get a better understanding of why certain things were going on. Apparently, unlike in the United States that has separate police forces for each state, and then a separate agency that handles federal manners, Japan has a more centralized force, with personnel and policy decisions coming from high up in Tokyo. The book sure doesn't hold your hand in regards to this information. It's deeply immersed in Japanese culture and assumes the reader knows a lot of this information (unsurprisingly, considering it's a translation of something originally meant for a Japanese audience). People who don't like to do legwork to understand their fiction might be annoyed, but I found this some of the most interesting parts of my reading experience.
I also loved Mikami and Minako's struggle to deal with Ayumi's disappearance. It was quite nuanced and very poignant, especially considering the "hard-boiled detective" angle of the majority of the narrative.
Unfortunately, there were certain obstacles that kept me from loving this book. First, it was a bit too long. There were parts where I would be reading with interest, but as soon as we hit another section where Mikami simply sits and reasons through anything and everything in his head, I began wondering how many pages were left until the next chapter. Perhaps this is cultural as well – I've noticed Japanese fiction to be more cerebral than your average English narrative, but as a "fast-paced" suspense novel rounding out at 566 pages, a lot of the longer internal monologues could have been cut down.
The other big downside is that there are a lot of characters, and a bunch of them have extremely similar names. Mikami, Minako, Mikumo, Mizuki... and that's just one batch. I spent the majority of the novel assuming this had to be something lost in translation, that in Japanese these spellings weren't nearly interchangeble so I could barely tell who was who.
Spoiler
But then it turns out that was 100% intentional and fed directly into the big plot twist at the end, which resulted in me giving a literal eye roll. The twist that Amamiya had been spending years calling everyone in the phone directory in search of the killer's voice was pretty badass, but man, not giving your characters similar names so the reader will confuse them is Creative Writing 101.Overall, a good read, but not a great one. Still, worth it for the cultural immersion lesson, whch is probably why I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 3.