Description
International Bestseller
Winner of the Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year Award
“Already a bestseller in Japan and the U.K., this cinematic crime novel suffused with fascinating cultural details follows a police department reinvestigating a chilling kidnapping that stumped them 14 years earlier.” ―Entertainment Weekly, The Must List
THE NIGHTMARE NO PARENT COULD ENDURE. THE CASE NO DETECTIVE COULD SOLVE. THE TWIST NO READER COULD PREDICT.
For five days, the parents of a seven-year-old Japanese schoolgirl sat and listened to the demands of their daughter’s kidnapper. They would never learn his identity. And they would never see their daughter alive again.
Fourteen years later, the mystery remains unsolved. The police department’s press officer―Yoshinobu Mikami, a former detective who was involved in the original case and who is now himself the father of a missing daughter―is forced to revisit the botched investigation. The stigma of the case known as “Six Four” has never faded; the police’s failure remains a profound source of shame and an unending collective responsibility.
Mikami does not aspire to solve the crime. He has worked in the department for his entire career, and while he has his own ambitions and loyalties, he is hoping simply to reach out to the victim’s family and to help finally put the notorious case to rest. But when he spots an anomaly in the files, he uncovers secrets he never could have imagined. He would never have even looked if he’d known what he would find.
An award-winning phenomenon in its native Japan―more than a million copies sold, and the winner of the Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year award―and already a critically celebrated top-ten bestseller in the U.K., Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four
“Not only is Six Four an addictive read, it is an education about Japan, its police and its society, and simply one of the best crime novels I have ever read.” —David Peace, author of GB84 and The Damned Utd
“A classic plot [which] suddenly turns into one of the most remarkable revenge dramas in modern detective fiction…[It] will leave even the most observant reader gasping.” —The Sunday Times
“Epic in ambition, [Six Four] unfurls like a flower in the spring sunlight, steadily increasing its grip as it does so.” —Daily Mail
“Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four, translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies, is by no means just another mystery novel, but rather an award-winning cultural phenomenon on the scale of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy
“Extremely detailed style and carefully wrought characters. Six Four succeeds on several levels: as a police procedural, an incisive character study, and a cold-case mystery.” —Jane Murphy, Booklist
“[Six Four] takes leisurely twists into the well-kept offices of Japan’s elite while providing a kind of informal sociological treatise on crime and punishment in Japanese society, to say nothing of an inside view of the police and their testy relationship with the media. Elaborate, but worth the effort. Think Jo Nesbo by way of Haruki Murakami, and with a most satisfying payoff.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Six Four avoids every crime-fiction cliche. The reward is a gripping novel . . . Complex, ingenious and engrossing . . . strikingly original . . . Jonathan Lloyd-Davies has translated Six Four with unobtrusive brio . . . Yokoyama possesses that elusive trait of a first-rate novelist: the ability to grab readers’ interest and never let go.” –Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post
