Hideo Yokoyama

The thing that makes Yokoyama's books so fascinating is his focus on procedure and explaining hierarchical systems and this collection of four novellas is no exception. The world of the administrative section of the police is not the usual focus of crime novels and Yokoyama does a fantastic job of creating tension in stories about seemingly routine administrative issues.

In one story, a woman police officer, a rising star in the forensics unit, misses work and it's up to an administrative show more officer who was one of the first women on the force to find out why. She knows that it isn't a simple case of an unauthorized day off and her investigation will reveal a lot about how the police force operates. Another story focuses on how promotions are handled, everything from how a problematic officer is transferred to a slightly less desirable posting, but not too undesirable, lest the press catch wind of a potential scandal. In this case, a man should retire from a private post in order to make room for others, but when he announces he's not leaving, it's up to an administrator to figure out why.

That each of the four novellas were so good and suspenseful that I read each in a single reading session seems counterintuitive, but Yokoyama loves the details and how the details form the bigger picture. Japanese police procedurals lean heavily into procedure and methodology and avoid the whole independent rogue officer trope so prevalent here and, in my opinion, that makes for a more compelling story. I prefer Yokoyama's novels, because they go into even more detail, but these are a fine way of waiting for his next full-length novel. show less

Almost 14 years earlier, in the last days of the Showa period (January 1989 in our calendar), a 7 years old girl was kidnapped and then, after the family paid the ransom, found dead. In the current time, December 2002, another girl is missing - a 16 years old ran from home 3 months earlier. The two incidents, albeit not connected on their own, get a connection through a police detective, Mikami, - he was part of the initial team on the first and the second is his own daughter.

That's how show more this novel opens - with a missing girl and the ghost of a dead one. But as the book progresses, you realize that they are not the main focus of the book - they are always somewhere there in the shadows, they drive Mikami and most of the story but they are not the main story.

Six Four (the title derives from the Japanese calendar - that last Showa year, which lasted only 7 days, was the 64th) is a slow burn of a crime novel which is more interested in exploring the police and its relationships than deal with high speed chases (although that will also be there) and gruesome deaths.

Mikami, a career officer in the police in Prefecture D's HQ, had recently been promoted and moved from the Investigative branch to the Administration side to lead the Media Relations department. And while this novel is not told in the first person, it may have been - we have Mikami's actions and thoughts and we never see anything he does not see, hear or think (I wonder if this is not because of how Japanese works as a language - do they have first person narratives at all?). There is a war going in between the two branches and at the time of the opening of the novel it is close to its peak - with Mikami caught in the middle, distrusted in some ways from both sides.

And the ghost of the girl who died as part of the 64 kidnapping is used as the excuse for that war to get even worse - the kidnapper and murderer was never caught, the statute of limitation for the crime is 15 years so in a year or so, even if he gets caught after that, he will never be brought to justice and everyone seems to have their own agenda.

For most of the novel I was pretty sure that there was a play with the names of the characters - they sounded too close to each other - but as with a lot of translations, I assumed that there is a hidden story in there, untranslatable out from the Japanese. I was right - and I was wrong. The names did make sense -- at least some of them - even in the translation. Every unrelated event through the first 500 pages of the novel was there for a reason - even the ones that sounded like filler.

Media Relations of a police department is not a department one would usually want to read about. But between it being traditionally Japanese and Mikami, it works. The story flows slowly and slows you down while you are reading - while uncovering more and more of what happened both during the original case and in the current times. Even the repetitions make sense - we are in Mikami's head and he obsesses and worries about the same things more than once. It has an almost hypnotic quality - you can read a few thousand more pages about the day to day life of the police and its internal battles.

And then the author finally picks up all the dangling threads together and pushes the story in gear. The sleepy style is gone and the story speeds towards its end, bringing the truth to the fore. And then it slows again - because once the truth is out there, it is time to stop and make sure it is not squandered and lost.

And yet, a few strands escape the end -- they remain in the wind. Not forgotten but there. Because this is how life is - things don't resolve each other at the same time.

If you are looking for a thriller which moves fast, look elsewhere. 64 is anything but. But if you are ready to read a very Japanese novel and follow a slow path, you may enjoy this novel as much as I did.

Even though this was the first novel by the author in English, it was not his first work about Prefecture D apparently. It stands on its own - but I wonder if some of those names, especially the ones that show up rarely, won't be easier to remember if we had met them before. show less

This novel begins with the fourteen year old cold case kidnapping and murder of a seven year old girl, but that's just the scaffolding. Really this is a novel about the internal politics of a Japanese police prefecture and the machinations between departments and officers jockeying for position.

Mikami is a detective reassigned to the press office, a forgotten corner of administration where he leads a group of three working out of a too-small office. As the novel begins, they are stuck show more between the administration department and an increasingly angry press as they seek to keep the name of a driver who hit a pedestrian secret. At the same time, Mikami is asked to set up the press for a visit from the top police commissioner from Tokyo and things rapidly fall apart as he is torn between what he is being asked to do and what he feels is right, between the responsibilities of his current job and his allegiance to the career he had as a detective and in finding out what exactly went so wrong fourteen years ago. Miakami and his wife are also searching for their runaway daughter.

I can't tell you why a novel focused on the internal struggles of a police department should be so fascinating, but I enjoyed every single page. Mikami was just such a great character to spend time with as he methodically works to figure out what exactly is going on and gains some understanding of himself, his wife and his career. show less

This is a Japanese police procedural that focuses mostly on interdepartmental politics and the police force's relationship with the press while remembering a cold case. Also, it is very long. At that description, you could be forgiven for thinking you'd never want to read the book. But. What if it was the absolute apex, the most perfect version possible of a Japanese police procedure that focuses on interdepartmental politics, media relations, with a dash of cold case investigation? Like, show more the best one that could ever exist, and also a book that you'll read until 3am, rolling forward through nimble prose, finding yourself physically present with the main character? That's what this is. Six Four. Recommended. Those who know, know. show less