Six Four

By: Hideo Yokoyama

Narrated by: Richard Burnip

Length: 24 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

Six Four. The nightmare no parent could endure. The case no detective could solve. The twist no listener could predict.

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 14 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.

©2012 Hideo Yokoyama (P)2016 Quercus Publishing Ltd

A surprising story about police bureaucracy

Highly recommended also (or maybe in particular) to those who don't usually enjoy crime fiction.

The writing is rather mediocre. The story is narrated in third person but from the point of view of the main character. Narration struggles to ressemble an individual's internal discourse, often instead telling this as if told by or to a third person. This reminded me vividly of high school students' short stories.

The reading by a single reader works fine in this type of narration, and the reader actually manages to breath life into the otherwise often rather toneless dialogues.

So, why 4 stars for the story? Exactly because of the story. I had never read anything quite like this before. It is unusual police fiction, for it is not primarily crime fiction. Yes, a crime has happened and it is solved in the course of the story, but this story is not primarily about it. It is a story about police bureaucracy and a man in mid life growing as a person in a chauvin professional world.

I know that it is not unusual in modern crime fiction that the police bureaucracy and main character's private life problems are also taken into consideration. But this is something different. Here the crime is in side role, the main character is not the one who solves it. Indeed, he doesn't really take part in the investigations. He isn't even a detective (anymore) and the story is about him and his colleagues growing as persons through a bureaucratic struggle.

Sweet Jesus this was boring

Narration draggy even after speeding it up, in desperate need of guide to characters, and their motivations remain a mystery. The main character is in public relations for the police and half the book is taken up with the relationship with the press. The mystery is a very small part and every bit discussed is gone over and over. While many may find the discussions of Japanese sensibilities very interesting, it made it very hard for me to understand how the characters would behave and frustrating to see their perverse priorities. it's just really, really boring, sorry to say.

A Slow, Worthwhile Story

Six Four is not a thriller, or even a mystery. Oh, there is a mystery within the various subplots, but it isn't the core focus.

No, Six Four is an in depth look into the police force in Japan, as seen by the head of Media Relations. It is actually more interesting than it sounds, but don't go in expecting bang zoom action. This is a novel about reflection, examination and duty.

I recommend it, but with a reminder that Six Four is a slow, deep crawl.

Good story, poor narrator

The story in Six Four picks up fast, and keeps moving. The characters are well-drawn, often surprising. But the narrator, and in particular the way he voices the protagonist, are extremely off-putting, making it very difficult to bond in any way with the story or the protagonist. Too bad, for sure, because I think there is more subtlety of characterization than comes across in the audio version.