All She Was Worth [Paperback]

Miyuki Miyabe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 1999

Here is a deftly written thriller that is also a "deep and moody" (NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) journey through the dark side of Japan's consumer-crazed society. Ordinary people plunge into insurmountable personal debt and fall prey to dangerous webs of underground creditors-so dangerous, in fact, that murder may be the only way out. A beautiful young woman vanishes, and the detective quickly finds she is not whom she claims to be. Is she a victim, a killer, or both? In a country that tracks its citizens at every turn, how can two women claim the same identity and then disappear without a trace?

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Recovering from a leg injury, a 43-year-old Tokyo police inspector named Shunsuke Honma realizes how out of touch he has become when a relative asks him to make some private inquiries into the disappearance of his fiancée. While he wasn't paying attention, it seems that everyone in the country but Honma has been caught up in a consumer feeding frenzy--going into heavy debt and declaring bankruptcy at a snowballing rate. This engrossing story of the search for happiness through shopping marks the first appearance in English of one of Japan's leading writers. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The horror in this beautifully fashioned tale of stolen identity lies not in the cold-blooded crimes but in the motive?a desperate hunger for consumer goods. Shunsuke Honma, a widowed 43-year-old Tokyo police inspector with a 10-year-old son, is on disability leave. The boring cycle of idleness punctuated by painful physical therapy sessions comes to a halt when a nephew asks for Honma's help in finding his missing fiancee, whom he knows as Shoko Sekine. As Honma's search intensifies, he realizes the fiancee had actually assumed Sekine's identity and possibly killed her. For the American reader, the jewel in this enormously compelling novel is the portrait of working- and middle-class Japanese getting caught in a cycle of astronomical personal debt in order to enjoy the good life. Also eye-opening is Japan's elaborate registry system for keeping track of its citizenry. In order to become Shoko Sekine, the impostor had to perpetrate an ingeniously elaborate series of hoaxes and lies. Honma is tenacious, methodical, an attentive listener with a retentive memory and the ability to connect disparate bits of information. The trail takes him back through the real Sekine's history and into the life of the other woman, whose family ran afoul of vicious loan sharks. Miyabe drives her complex plot with spare prose, combining expert pacing and psychological nuance to ultimately haunting effect. (Feb.) FYI: All She Was worth was named Best Novel of the year and Best Mystery for 1992 in Japan.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (May 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395966582
• ISBN-13: 978-0395966587
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Want Of A Penny, June 9, 2004

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All She Was Worth (Paperback)

It is a shame that this single volume is the only novel of Miyuki Miyabe's that has made it into translation. In Japan, Miyabe is a highly successful writer whose novels have been adapted into 10 films as well. Here she is only barely known, represented only by a single detective story - All She Was Worth.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/common/customer-reviews/stars-5-0.gifThe novel tells the story of Shinsuke Honma, a middle-aged police detective who is off duty while recovering from a gunshot wound to his leg. The enforced inactivity has begun to wear thin on him, and a request from a distant relative to investigate the disappearance of his fiance - Shoko Sekine - tempts him into a freelance investigation that is part meticulous investigation and part social commentary. Shoko disappeared when it was revealed that she had gone through a personal bankruptcy. Honma discovers layer after layer of misdirection and subterfuge - the disappearance is only a reflection of the grim truth.

The telling of the story reveals many of the inherent differences between Japanese and Western writing, even as it pares away at a social problem - easy credit and indebtedness - that is universal in both cultures. The telling is extremely detailed, with a strong focus not on the plot, but on the social and family milieus of the characters. The style is very naturalistic, and may irk American readers who are so used to stories that are action based and plot driven. Yet there are opportunities here for the writer to indulge of some niceties of language, many of which come through despite it being a translation.

What Miyabe has chronicled is the lives of ordinary Japanese, carrying on with their lives, not the flashy high tech or Samurai mythos face of Japan that we see most often in imported Japanese culture. This is quite eye-opening, even as we realize that quiet desperation is not just a Western phenomenon. In a sense, the plot itself isn't very important. In fact, the reader will know from fairly early in the novel what the crime is and who committed it. But the details of Honma's investigation, the bits of his family life, the fine grains of Shoko Sekine's own adventures, fit together like a puzzle, forming a compelling whole of their own. As such, this is an excellent introduction into what makes Japanese popular fiction tick.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, December 25, 2002

By 

Daitokuji31 (Black Glass) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All She Was Worth (Paperback)

This is one of the books that I have wanted to read for quite some time but for some reason or another have put it off. Well, I have finally read it, and enjoyed every minute of it. To begin with I have never read many mystery novels before, so I did not know how I would respond to this one, but it gripped me very quickly. The story is pretty simple. A detective named honma is taking it easy because he was wounded by a gunshot his nephew soon comes by and asks him to help him find his missing fiance. Bored with sitting at home Honma takes the case, but it soon changes into something completely different than simply a runaway fiance. What he finds involves a case of murder. a murder to steal someone else's identity. He enters the world of Kyoko a beautiful woman whose life had been completely destroyed by her father's financial woes.

Although it seems simple this is actually a complex read. The most complex character is Kyoko: the reader does not know whether to hate her or feel sympathy for her. I don't want to give away any details here. please read the book.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterful MasterCard Murders in Modern Japan, August 17, 2000

By 

Alexandra Chusid (Rockville, MD United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All She Was Worth (Paperback)

What a chilling and fabulous novel! As a dilettante in world of mystery, I picked up this novel accidentally in my quest for a new Japanese author. What a delight to discover that Miyabe's concerns range far beyond those of the typical "who-done-it."

Each character, from the protagonist--a disabled police officer struggling with his sudden uselessness after a bullet wound takes him out of the game--to the suspect/victim--a girl whose crime of credit excess is mirrored by nearly every middle-class American, reflects profoundly what it means to be a product of a consumer society.

Characters consume, or are consumed. It's a Machievellian glance at society which asks (in the words of Billy Crystal)if it isn't better to look good than to feel good, at least until the bills come due.

I highly recommend this novel as an engrossing mystery, but more importantly, as an impressive social critique of this era.