Villain
Vintage Crime/Black Lizard · first published 2007 · 304 pages
A young woman is found dead at a remote mountain pass in southern Japan, and the story moves among the people whose lives touched hers.
Each chapter shifts to a new voice, family, friends, or strangers, so sympathy keeps sliding in unexpected directions.
For a night drive along an empty coast.
About this book
In a corner of Kyushu, an insurance saleswoman goes out one winter night and does not come home. The police soon have a suspect, but the book is more interested in everyone around the crime: a grieving father, a lonely grandmother, a woman in a menswear shop who longs for someone to talk to. Moving through love hotels, seaside towns, and lighthouses, it asks who in such a story deserves the word villain.