Blue Light Yokohama

Author/Guide: Nicolás Obregón

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: “A novel born of fascination and tragic mystery” says the author

ISBN: 978-0718184049
Genre: Crime

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What you need to know before your trail

Inspector Kosuke Iwata, newly transferred to Tokyo’s homicide department, is assigned a new partner and a secondhand case.

Blunt, hard as nails and shunned by her colleagues, Assistant Inspector Noriko Sakai is a partner Iwata decides it would be unwise to cross.

A case that’s complicated – a family of four murdered in their own home by a killer who then ate ice cream, surfed the web and painted a hideous black sun on the bedroom ceiling before he left in broad daylight. A case that so haunted the original investigator that he threw himself off the city’s famous Rainbow Bridge.

Carrying his own secret torment, Iwata is no stranger to pain. He senses the trauma behind the killer’s brutal actions. Yet his progress is thwarted in the unlikeliest of places.

Fearing corruption among his fellow officers, tracking a killer he’s sure is only just beginning and trying to put his own shattered life back together, Iwata knows time is running out before he’s taken off the case or there are more killings . . .

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Travel Guide

Tokyo

“The lights of the city are so pretty
Yokohama, Blue Light Yokohama
I’m happy with you
Please let me hear
Yokohama, Blue Light Yokohama
Those words of love from you”

This was the song the author heard on the television when he was reading an article about an unsolved murder case. The Miyazawa family was murdered 10 years previously and the crime had never been solved. The police had come to the home on each anniversary to bow down beside the house and ask for forgiveness in not solving the crime. Inspector Kosuke Iwata was born.

Tokyo landscape

“The Tokyo cityscape stretched out before him, cities within cities, angles incalculable. Thirty-five million existences crammed into circadian thythms of concrete and cables. Immense infraestructure, never -ending networks – all of it delicate as hummingbird heartbeats.”

This is Tokyo in all its mad cap glory and the struggles of a police officer and his force, to get to the truth of a mystery. Iwata is a troubled individual and not what you would call a team member. Iwata soon finds himself an outcast so he’s forced to do his own investigation into what soon becomes a series of ritualistic murders – weaving in and out of the chaotic streets of Tokyo – where you end up is anyone’s guess.

Booktrailer Review

Clare: @thebooktrailer

A serial killer thriller with ritualistic overtones is a high otane novel of its own – mix that in with the chaotic noise and maze of Tokyo streets, the dim of noise really ramps up the tension. For me this is what makes the book stand out – this is a police procedural and the detective is as troubled as they come, but the nature of the investigation and the busy landscape do confuse matters more, making it complex and multilayered.

I did struggle a bit with the multi threads in the story – we went that way, this way, the other way – but then this is what a real investigation must be like. There’s a lot to pick up and flashbacks to the past of the detective when young were a little superfluous to the plot but these are just little niggles.

This stood out for me overall as I think the inspiration for the novel and therefore the different cultural differences in Japan could well lead to even more unusual cases in future novels.Giving victims closure is a huge draw and this thread was nicely carried through. A new series of police procedurals set in Japan? Yes please!