Out by Natsuo Kirino (Vintage Books $12.95)Natsuo Kirino is the grande dame of Japanese Crime fiction and has written over 40 books, but this is her first title translated into English. What took so long?
This is really two novels: an outstanding suspense thriller and a scathing indictment of inequities of Japanese society. Kirino serves up a dark, violent and sophisticated thriller on par with the best of Val McDermid and Ruth Rendell, with some Pulp Fiction moments thrown in. more
Kirino portrays a side of Japanese society outsiders rarely see in this Tokyo noir. Four friends, working-class women who work the night-shift at a box lunch factory, become embroiled in a murder when one of them kills her abusive husband. The situation escalates when Masako, the most level-headed of the four, says she will help the terrified and hapless murderer Yayoi, dispose of the body. She soon realizes that effective disposal will mean...dismemberment. That's when the other two get involved. Why whould anyone in their right mind participate in something like this? Money. Through this horrible act the four women can find a way out of circumstances they each find unbearable, which they withstand in quiet despair or desperation. For each of them, the dead man is their last chance of escape, each from a different hell.
When a police investigation starts, the pressure fractures the friendship between the women, and when a gangster is accused of the crime, things get really ugly. Not to be missed.
Read an interview with Natsuo Kirino here.
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