Lady Joker: Volume 2
The Million Copy Bestselling 'Masterpiece of Japanese Crime Fiction'
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- 3,99 €
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
'One of the great masterpieces of Japanese crime fiction' David Peace, author of Tokyo Year Zero
One of Japan's great modern writers, this second half of Lady Joker brings Kaoru Takamura's breathtaking masterpiece to a gripping conclusion.
Five men who meet at a Tokyo racetrack every week carry out a heist. They have kidnapped the CEO of Japan's largest beer company to extract blood money from the company's corrupt financiers.
Known as Lady Joker, the men make their first attack on the beer company when their demands are not met. As the attacks escalate, the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are exposed, the stakes rise, and bring into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes and the villains. Some will lose everything, even their lives.
Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case that terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines this watershed episode in modern Japanese history.
'A novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts' Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
