A workout for the mind

Author : Hideo Yokoyama
Title : Six Four
Published : 28/10/2016
Pages : 656
Genre : Crime Thriller
Publisher : Riverrun







     For five days in January 1989, the parents of a seven-year-old Tokyo schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter's kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. They would never see their daughter again. For the fourteen years that followed, the Japanese public listened to the police's apologies. They would never forget the botched investigation that became known as 'Six Four'. They would never forgive the authorities their failure. For one week in late 2002, the press officer attached to the police department in question confronted an anomaly in the case. He could never imagine what he would uncover. He would never have looked if he'd known what he would find.

     So it was time to tackle Six Four, it's a book that has been sat in my to be read pile for to long. The reason behind this was first it's a very long book and second the reviews I had read where a mixed bag. There seemed to be a lot of people struggling to get on with the style in which it was written.  Now, this is not the first translated Japanese book I have spent time with. the have a style and flow that seems to be unique to Japan. However, I was interested enough to but the book in the first place so I figured it was time to give it my undivided attention. And to see if all the praise it was reviving was to be worth the time I was going to have to devote it.

     Throughout this story, we meet a larger number of characters, all with a link in some way or another to the original case that sets this book in motion. For some we only get to know them in passing for other it becomes as much about there stories as it does about learning what happened to a little girl so very long ago. If I was to try and pin down a lead I suppose it would be Mikami sent to work in media relations for the police. But this is a book that is so much more than the story of one man. It shows in exacting detail how a crime such as this can echo down the halls of time. The tole it takes on not just the family but those who came into contact with the case. As I followed along with these people it felt almost like a disease infect each new person it touched. In the case of Mikami, it almost becomes a madness that drives him from the moment of wake till until the setting of the sun.

     This a very demanding text to deal with, in part this is due to the sheer volume of information in covers. There is also the matter of the style of the author, Don't be fooled by its size. This is possibly one of the most stripped back novels I have ever read. There are no flower prose and no getting lost in the meandering mind of a detective. It feels more like a nonfiction account of a real crime. It leads to an interesting reading experience and one I did really enjoy. This is a critic of the Japanese police and the way it operates as much as it is a story of trying to bring peace to a family. One of the other standout things for me is the careful and methodical ways in which this book is planned and executed. It is my understanding that the author poured everything he had into the writing of this novel and it shows. This is a hard book to talk about the story without giving the whole game away. I will say it's not a fasted pace book, there are some twist and turns along the way to keep things interesting. With that in mind, I never felt I slowed down each paragraph and chapter had it's placed and served in painting in a much bigger picture.

     I think this is a book that people who have read it will talk about for a long time after. to dissect it and pull it apart from every angle. It is, however, a book you can't really talk about with people who haven't read it. In this review, I did the best I could and am waiting to be able to talk about it with someone I know who has.