Audiobook and e-book reviews: fiction from Lewis Carroll, Hideo Yokoyama and Anthony Gardner
Scarlett Johansson reads Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
by Hideo Yokoyama
Quercus (e-book)
Judging by recent weeks, Japano-Noir may soon wrest control from Scandi-Nordic (choose your poison) crime writing. First, Keigo Higashino’s superb The Midsummer Equation frazzled our minds. Now, hard on that book’s heels comes Hideo Yokoyama’s stupendous Six Four, his first novel to be translated into English. On its publication in Japan in 2012, it sold over a million copies within a week. The winding, hard-hitting and political aspects of the novel will doubtless earn comparisons with James Ellroy, not to mention the infamous Lindbergh case. Our hero is Yoshinobu Mikami, an ex-detective relegated to the ranks of Media Officer. Forced to deal with the more sensational aspects of police work, he examines an unsolved kidnap case from 14 years before. It strikes a chord, first because Mikami’s own daughter has gone missing, and second because he spots a major flaw in the investigation. Following where this breadcrumb leads dominates the action – although for “action” read patient and perseverant research. Nevertheless, the parallel cases provide increasing emotional intensity (both for Mikami’s wife, Minako, and the police hierarchy), and the stunning twist promised by the blurb really is one of the more memorable of recent years. Be warned: you will have to pay close attention. But what else is reading for?
by Anthony Gardner