Adult fiction/suspense;mystery. Yoshida's been called "the Japanese Stieg Larsson" but this book had an entirely different feel to it. Still good, but lacking in strong characters (esp. female characters). ( )

'Isn't it like everybody says? That he's the villain in all this? And I just decided on my own to fall for someone like that.
Right?'

It seems wholly appropriate that this book ends with a question. This is more of a psychological study of damaged people, a delving into the seedy side of love hotels and gangsters extorting money, a love story or a story of obsession. This is not a crime thriller in the sense that you might expect; it is certainly not a police procedural crime novel - so whatever you are expecting, be warned.

The basic story is revealed in the first couple of pages: a girl's body is found in the remote Mitsuse Pass, on the border between the prefectures of Fukuoka and Saga. And we know that a construction worker has been arrested for her murder. Done deal. Story over. What follows is a slow unravelling of how the events happened, and uncovers a pretty unsavoury bunch of characters. The victim is Yoshino, a young insurance worker who dabbles in prostitution and is a bit flaky. She has an obsession with Keigo, a bit of a spoilt brat with too much money, but has also been seeing Yuichi, the aforementioned construction worker. Later in the course of events Yuichi meets Mitsuyo and ends up on the run from the police as the net closes in on him, once Keigo is cleared of the crime.

So, that's the basic premise. But this is a slow book; there are lots of quite detailed descriptions of roads and cars, of people having apparently casual conversations. There are various subplots involving the families of both victim and murderer, which may or may not contribute to the strength of the story.

What I took most from the book was Yoshida's psychological study of the characters, in particular Yuichi, abandoned by his mother as a young boy and raised by his grandparents. He is obsessive about his car, his prize possession, and prone to sudden mood swings. His relationship with Mitsuyo is a whirlwind love story that is doomed to fail from the start, and ends in an abandoned lighthouse, a suitably apt metaphor and an important symbol for Yuichi which is revealed earlier in the book.

It's not perfect, but I knew what I was getting into, having seen the (excellent) film version a few years ago. There are various narrative shifts, especially towards the end of the book when we shift from third- to first-person narrative to get the insights from many of the characters as they reflect on the events afterwards. Some are more successful than others, to be honest, but it adds to a general sense that this book is more like a documentary than thriller. Portrait of a Villain, more like it.

Anyway, I would recommend it, and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's one of those where you need to ignore the publisher's blurb and the literary reviews, and just give it a try. 4 stars from me. ( )

So the first couple of pages of Villain don’t exactly make you want to jump into the fray. Because it reads like a rather boring travel guide, written by somebody who is rather into transportation and roads. You can know all you need to know about the tolls for vehicles between Nagasaki and Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Hakata.

I went along with it, and then comes the trigger. The last paragraph (of the first section) tells the reader of an arrest, of a crime, essentially spelling it out for you.


And that’s the thing I realise about Japanese crime fiction, at least the three that I have read so far (Out, The Devotion of Suspect X). That it is not about the mystery, it’s not technically a whodunnit, because you already know whodidit. Because it’s right there in your face, in the first few sections, the first few pages even. These books are more about the ‘why’, and the effect the murders have – on the murderers themselves, the victim’s family and friends, the other suspects.

Villain, by Shuichi Yoshida, brings out a different part of Japan, one of love hotels and online dating, and ageing seaside villages full of elderly residents. It is a quite ugly, rather lonely view of Japan.

“The scenery flowing past changed, but they never seemed to get anywhere. When the interstate ended, it connected up with the prefectural highway, and past that were city and local roads. Mitsuyo had a road atlas spread out on the dashboard. She flipped through the maps and saw that the highways and roads were all color-coded. Interstates were orange, prefectural highways were green, local roads were blue, and smaller roads were white. The countless roads were a net, a web that had caught them and the car they were in.”

Told from multiple viewpoints especially towards the end of the book, Villain shines when the focus is on the victim’s father, who struggles to come to terms with his daughter’s death, and his painful realisation that he didn’t really know his child at all.

Villain was an engrossing, thought provoking read, and leaves you wondering, who – or perhaps what – is the real ‘villain’ here. ( )

One morning in January 2006, the body of a female insurance saleswoman, Yoshino was found dead on Mitsue Pass. A young construction worker, Yuichi is arrested for her murder. Shifting perspectives, Villain tells the story of the events leading up to Yoshino’s murder and the aftermaths.

Kosaku Yoshida is often considered as one of Japan’s best crime writers and as a fan of Japanese Lit, I knew I had to check one of his books out. However I was a little disappointed; the story was interesting but I was not a fan of the execution. I thought it builds up the suspense, then shifts perspective; which felt like it kept stopping and starting and that just felt too clunky. Yoshida explores the idea of alienation, which seems to be a common theme in Japanese fiction. This worked well, however this was not enough to redeem the novel for me.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/thriller/mini-reviews-crime-edit... ( )

Strange book - starts off almost like a true life crime docudrama and then gets better about half way through. The end is weak and you are told who did it in the first chapter. I'm not really sure what the point of writing this book was. ( )