Lady Joker, Volume 2

March 1, 2022

With this second volume, Takamura wraps up a story based on Japan's notorious Glico-Morinaga kidnapping in 1984, though the kidnapping here takes place in 1995. The first, multi-best-booked installment introduced a cluster of individuals who trace their health problems (or those of loved ones) to a Hinode Beer factory and plot to kidnap the corporation's president. The second volume chronicles the kidnapping's aftermath, revealing high-level business malfeasance and fractures in Japanese society. With Lady Joker, the multi-award-winning Takamura gets her first translation into English.

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August 29, 2022
Set in 1995 Japan, Takamura’s satisfying conclusion to 2021’s Lady Joker, Vol. 1, picks up where the previous book ended with the Hinode Beer corporation, suspected of having allowed unhealthy working conditions for its employees for decades, receiving a threatening message from the shadowy criminal gang calling itself Lady Joker. The group asks that a ransom of ¥600 million be prepared and the demand kept secret from the police to avoid harm to an unnamed hostage. The police, who have been alerted by Hinode’s leadership, desperately try to identify who the members of Lady Joker are and what they’re up to, given that no hostage is known to exist. The extortion scheme is just one piece of the puzzle, which includes tampering with Hinode’s product so that the beer appears tinged with blood and possible stock manipulations. Admirers of intricate crime fiction, which both engages the intellect and offers insights into the hidden parts of a society, will hope for further translations of this gifted author’s work. Agent: Chigusa Ogino, Tuttle-Mori (Japan).

Starred review from August 15, 2022
The second half of Takamura's compelling crime epic--following Lady Joker, Volume 1 (2021)--plumbs the connections between corporate malfeasance and social immorality. There's no attempt to pretend that Volume 2 stands alone. The opening section--Part 4, "The Threat"--opens in medias res during the summer of 1995. Chief Inspector of First Investigation Hidetsugu Kanzaki has just briefed the press about a poison gas attack on the subway perpetrated by a religious cult and evasively parried questions about Lady Joker, the crime group that had earlier kidnapped and released Kyosuke Shiroyama, president and CEO of the unscrupulous Hinode Beer. Lady Joker is now demanding 600 million yen in used bills from Shiroyama. Takamura's explosive novel, based on actual events that are well known in Japan, persuasively depicts corruption at the heart of Japanese society in the late 20th century. The ethical center isn't holding. Volume 1 highlighted the backstories of the five aggrieved men at the core of the kidnapping; Volume 2 also follows the police and the press corps, both closely monitoring Lady Joker. An extensive "Dramatis Personae" is invaluable in keeping track of the large cast of characters. At the center is a moral reckoning for Shiroyama, who's forced to reevaluate his life and corporate tenure, eventually seeing the synergy in the personal, social, and political. Like Don DeLillo's Underworld, Takamura's sprawling saga situates its crime plot in the context of corruption. As it draws to a close, courtesy of multiple murders, abductions, fraud, blackmail, suicides, upheaval within law enforcement, and the inevitable coverup, city desk reporter Haruhisa Kubo, who's documented it all on his Tokyo police beat, falls violently ill from this virus of societal decay. A complex work of stunning breadth and depth by a master of the genre.

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