Lady Joker: Volume 2: The Million Copy Bestselling 'Masterpiece of Japanese Crime Fiction'

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I wanted to love this book and I think if I had read Volume 1 before it I would have. However, I found it slower than what I typically love. DNF at 47%. Although Lady Joker is by no means a horrible book, I just cannot motivate myself to finish it. It is boring and repetitive, the characters are neither nuanced nor interesting enough to keep me invested, and I do not see the plot going anywhere.

Lady Joker: Volume 2: The Million Copy Bestselling Lady Joker: Volume 2: The Million Copy Bestselling

This includes those of Shiroyama, who is abducted and taken to a snowy mountain location. His interaction with the fellow board members of Hinode Beer are also shown We also follow members of the police authorities, primarily the MPD; and with the attention that the disappearance of such a prominent businessman man our attention is drawn to the eager members of staff of the newspaper Toho News.It's the first book I've read in a long time without a single non-cis-male main character. Takamura's female characters are wives, secretaries, nieces, daughters and they have no point of view of their own in her telling of the story. She seems deeply fascinating by a society made by, run by and destroyed by men and men only. Intent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers. Mysterious and multilayered, [ Lady Joker] gives readers extortion and kidnapping as it critiques the dark corners of Japanese society and the human experience.”

Lady Joker: Volume 1: The Million Copy Bestselling Lady Joker: Volume 1: The Million Copy Bestselling

Takamura’s challenging, genre-confounding epic offers a sweeping view of contemporary Japan in all its complexity. The premise sounded so good - a plan to extort money out of a beer corporation - and I was glued to the book for about the first third of it. But once it moved away from the “Lady Joker” group who commit the crime and focused on the victim of the crime, the press, and the police - it just became very boring and moved painfully slow. I can’t allow myself to not finish a book (unless it’s completely terrible) - so I continued to work my way through it although it took way longer than it should have because I just kept getting bored. Eventually I started to speed read through it just to get it done. This isn't always the case, and at times the story really flies along. It's not even that there is more action happening, it just eases up on double and triple explanations. Brokenness is incorrect, nor are they desperate: the fire of hatred has been lite and it desires action—so they kidnapped and extort the CEO of Japan’s biggest beer company, Hindoe.A fantastic ending to the two part novel. All I can say is that if you loved Lady Joker Volume one you won't be disappointed with volume two. Lady Joker’ was originally published as ‘Redi jōkā’ in Japan in 1997 and was translated from the Japanese by Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell. Both volumes open with a handy Dramatis Personae. 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.”