People Who Eat Darkness (2010)

Richard Lloyd Parry's true-crime nonfiction novel has obscure ambitions in directions toward the best—certainly in the opinion of the blurbers lined up for it—namely, In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song. The story in summary has endless potential for the flatly lurid and sensational but Parry evades all that with his canny construction. In 2000, a 21-year-old British woman working in the shadowy hostess bar economy of Tokyo goes missing. Her family is frantic, flying in to Tokyo to press the search. Media coverage is all over it (in the UK, no doubt—I don't actually recall it). Speculation and high emotions are rampant. Nine months later her dismembered body is found buried in a cave. Eventually a man is charged with the crime. Parry is quite artful about the way he distributes information. In his tick-tock portions he discloses almost right away that the woman, Lucie Blackman, was dead within 24 hours of going missing. He unhooks us from the roller-coaster ride of the family, police, and public in real-time, but puts us on another one instead. He works the suspense by taking the space he needs for exposition, which may be somewhat dry but is necessary to understand this case, and is often so alien that more time is required to digest it: about the hostess bar economy in Tokyo, about how Western women are viewed there, about the surreptitious nature of the work in terms of their visas. Later, as Parry reveals more and the story deepens, he must describe the Japanese police culture and criminal legal system. The trial takes literally years. Parry never explains his title, but in a way he doesn't have to because it feels like eating darkness is what we're doing as we go. The variety of human monsters is probably infinite but it's somehow always surprising when you come across the next new one. Parry, a British national who serves as an Asia correspondent for the London Times is uniquely positioned to tell the story, with which it sounds like he was patiently, grindingly obsessed for more than 10 years (and could well still be following further developments). The result is a remarkable book that makes a good deal more of a routine missing person case (in this day and age!) than you or I or anyone else might have. Kind of like In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic.