Customer Reviews

Girl in a Box

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I once heard a mystery author refer to "Jessica Fletcher Syndrome," named after the heroine of "Murder, She Wrote." She was referring to the way that amateur sleuths are constantly stumbling over dead bodies. A lot of mystery fans can just suspend their disbelief and enjoy the stories, but in some long-running series, the author acknowledges that constantly dealing with crime and murder has repercussions on their hero or heroine.

This is the ninth book in Sujata Massey's Rei Shimura series, and the young woman in her 20s making her way as an antique dealer in Japan is now 30 and working for the U.S. government as a spy. It sounds like a bit of a stretch, but two things make Rei perfect for the job: her mixed heritage, which allows her to be much less conspicuous in Japan than a Caucasian would be; and her experience investigating crimes.

In "Girl in a Box," Rei has to go undercover in a super-ritzy Japanese department store in order to discover some secrets. Her customers and co-workers think she's a simple salesgirl, but in fact, she's creeping around planting bugs and trying to overhear conversations. Naturally, her position is extremely precarious -- in fact, her predecessor died under mysterious circumstances.

People who love this series because of the cultural component will love finding out about the inner workings of a Japanese department store. It's pretty different than the American retail scene! And, of course, Rei fans will want to find out the latest about her love life. It can be read as a stand-alone but knowing everything about Rei's past as revealed in the previous books adds another layer of enjoyment.

I have to agree with J. Hammond. Rei working for an undercover agency -- certainly a government agency -- is not believable. But there are other objections, and some plusses.

Good Things: The story is interesting, and much less hackneyed than most mystery novels. Also, as usual, the information / culture about Japan is wonderful. I much enjoyed all the information about the department store, the needle blessing, etc.

Bad Things: I agree with Hammond: lose the labels. They make Rei seem shallow and pretentious, like a chick in bad chick lit. The occasional designer reference as appropriate to the story is OK, but the REI I know would not be plugging "comme des garcons". She'd be wearing jeans by someone normal, like JCrew, LLBean, etc.

Another bad thing: Even without the label-dropping, she is starting to seem really shallow to me. There is occasional lip service to how Hugh "broke her heart" but no real sense of missing him. Really! They were engaged! She ought to be remembering him and trying to get him to forgive her. No one gets over a REAL serious romance of long standing that fast. And she spends the book wanting to [bleep] her new boss. Come ON! This is not the Rei I used to like.

Also, she seems not to remember that SHE cheated on Hugh. No, she says He broke Her heart. A little honesty and regret would be nice.

Finally, I miss the antiques. Bring back the antiques and bring back Hugh. At least make Rei's emotional life a little more mature.

I have read every book in this series and I think the last few have not been up to the early high standard. The plots have gotten away from the original idea of antique dealer/amateur slueth, which I really enjoyed.

I found the whole premise of Rei working for a fictional undercover agency ridiculous. I find very annoying the inclusion of the description and label of every garment Rei wears.

It's been seven-and-a-half years since we were first introduced to intrepid girl sleuth with an international flair, Rei Shimura, in "The Salaryman's Wife". So much has happened to Rei since then: she started her own successful antiques business; deeply loved and lost two men; been kidnapped, nearly stabbed; poisoned; nearly burnt to death in an arson fire; pushed down a flight of subway stairs, thrown out of a speeding car, & nearly drowned in a typhoon-swollen river. She has had her picture in the tabloid press, been deported for breaking into a hotel room; broken an engagement (twice) and lost her lover's baby.

Rei has only aged a year to every two of ours out in reader land, taking her from 27 to 30 years old. Still, with all that, and her twenties now behind her, one would expect this slightly older Rei to be slightly wiser, too, and have an adventure worthy of all her growing life experience. I found "Girl in a Box" disappointing on that score. This installment finds Rei back in Tokyo, posing as the 'perfect' department store employee: a 23-year-old well-bred and immaculately-groomed girl still living at home with her parents. Her mission: to gather intelligence about potential organized crime activity on behalf of the American government. Since it comes as a surprise to no one that the Japanese mafia ('yakuza') has its fingers in every major profit-making concern in Japanese interests both domestic and abroad, the conceit that it's so shocking to the fictitious government agency that employs Rei that they'd go to ridiculous lengths to imperil her life by sending her in to gather intel is the only real mystery here. Rei as a covert ops agent alone strains credulity; allegedly she has been spending 6 months in spy school, but she's not very good at it, as she manages to make frequent blunders as called for by the plot in order to maximize her peril. For all her blundering about on the job, evidently she slips so effortlessly into her cover, aided by a super-glam makeup job and new haircut, that no one ever questions her identity. Rather odd, since her quaint non-native pronunciation & her functional illiteracy in reading written Japanese have always made her stand out and struggle in the past. Rei is just not convincing as either a department store doll or a spy. A large part of Rei's prickly charm is missing in this installment; her complete lack of introspection becomes grating--it was only two books ago that Rei had a miscarriage & ended her relationship with Hugh for good(again), but there's no hint of that water under the bridge. Indeed, there is no connection to any of Rei's past life at all, save one brief appearance each of Aunt Norie and BFF Richard Randall. It's rather instructive that Rei is posing as a 23-year-old here, because Massey has essentially erased most of the last 7 years like they never happened.

The best part of any Rei adventure for me is always the Japanese cultural tidbits. Through Rei's exploits I have learned a great deal about antique Japanese woodwork; kimono, ikebana; comic book culture & the battles 'half-blooded' people fight daily in that society. This book focuses on the modern Japanese obsession with mass consumerism, a facet that is neither flattering to the Japanese people nor particularly interesting. Having spent 6 years in Japan, I can say that Ms. Massey's cultural details and the physical aspects of her locations have been spot-on so far. I never had the funds to shop in the upscale department stores such as the one Rei works in here, but it still fails to engage me on a level of her other books. I do wonder whether the real Mitsutan Department store, an actual company, and the Japanese equivilent of Macy's, has any issues with being raked over the coals as a hotbed of underworld criminal activity? That would be a severe loss of face for them, even if the work is entirely fictional.

As a stand-alone work, "Girl in a Box" is a pleasant-enough outing. But for those of us familiar with Rei's milieu, this effort falls far short of what we are accustomed to seeing. I don't think any of us are ready, either, to see Rei replace Hugh so quickly with her older boss, no matter how attractive he might be. Let's hope that Rei makes good on her plan to quit the spy agency and return to her first love of antiques. The antiques world desperately needs her, but the espionage world is better off if she stays as far away as possible. I'm also gunning for a return to the picture of Rei's estranged lover, Hugh Glendinning. Rei might not want to admit it, but even if those two are often like sushi & Guinness, they belong together.

I look forward to each of Rei's new adventures. This latest one did not disappoint me.

I have to admit this first: I have read each and everyone of Sujata Massey's "Rei Shimura" series. I'm addicted to them. So, forgive me while I now dope slap this Rei character.

It is inconceivable to me that anyone can continue to make so many bad and ill-planned decisions and still be alive or employable. At times, the author just makes some technical mistakes that can be annoying for this reader, at least. Example: In 'The Typhoon Lover' there is a scene where Rei is making her way through a driving rainstorm, on foot, while carrying some valuable papers under her shirt. When she arrives at her destination she feels grateful that she left them back at home where they are dry and safe. That kind of stuff just pulls me right out of the fantasy of the mystery and into the present and real world. Not why I read. Maybe Ms Massey could finish writing a critical scene before she goes to the restroom or on vacation or whatever, so she doesn't have to recall where she left off.

Rei makes alot of mistakes that are just unaccountably dense, given her obvious intelligence and bravery.

I love learning about Japanese culture and would prefer she stay in Japan longer. The scenes with her in DC are not very interesting to me personally. And I'm really glad she is done (for now) with Hugh. He seemed pretty petulant to me. Unlike some readers I don't mind the designer name dropping. She is a clotheshorse. It suits her.

I'm sure I'll read this prolific author's 2008 book as well. But, like 'Girl In a Box', I'll get it from the library and not buy it like I did all her prior books.

In this new adventure, the reader has the opportunity to read on the makings of a new spy. How carefully the cover story and the training have to be develop a "personality profile". Then, the reader is allowed to stoll in the poshiest department store in Japan, thru the cover of Rei as an employee. Its a delightful book that grabs your attention since the first page. Rei's character is growing older and more complex. Yes she has made a lot of mistakes, but to me that is what makes her more interesting and fresh...i never know how she is going to react! That is what keeps me reading.

There is something to be said about the careful description of garment labels. It is a very Japanese thing to do; it seems many Japanese are enamored about couture names. It is only normal that our Rei Shimura is also very interested in them too!

I am eagerly awaiting for the next book!

I have read all of the Rei Shimura books and have enjoyed all but the last two tremendously. Rei is an engaging and surprising character--completely unstereotypical, as are her interesting parents and family. But, it was extremely disappointing that the relationship with Hugh ended, and Rei's character and the plotlines are increasingly problematical. I do not believe Rei as an undercover operative and Michael is too boring a character for words. There are so many interesting adventures Rei could have. Why not make her a reporter for a bilingual US/Japan magazine? She could develop into an art consultant and extend the series in that direction. How about a brief (tragic?) marriage to a Japanese man? Rei's self-absorption and character flaws grow increasingly irksome as she enters her 30's. Time to grow up. Hugh was the perfect foil for Rei--bring him back, please!

Rei is a delightful character, youthful and mature at the same time, and she is why I enjoyed this novel quite a bit. While I have little interest in fashion myself, I got caught up in Rei's interest. The importance of Japanese culture to the story is a definite plus, and the writing is very competent, competent enough to make Rei a credible character. The plot makes sense once you are willing to accept the secret organization which is Rei's employer, and why this organization would take on the mission it did. The novel has a very mediocre beginning, but gets much better once Rei makes it to Japan and begins her employment in the department store; the mystery aspect becomes important, and even suspenseful, at about the time Rei meets the Indian MBA, which is well along in the book.

The author's first book, The Salaryman's Wife, was a combination mystery and romance novel, and I didn't think it succeed very well on either score. I read it because I have been studying a little Japanese and wanted to get more insight into the Japanese culture. Like the author herself, Massey's heroine Rei is an outsider who has spent a few years in Japan and whose mastery of spoken Japanese is adequate but not much better, and whose mastery of the written language is quite weak. Thus we get an outsider's point of view, which in some ways works fairly well in a novel written for Americans. But I was a little disappointed by how superficial it seemed to be.

"The Girl in the Box" is a spy novel. Now I have read a ton of mystery novels and at one time was a fanatical fan of spy novels, and I think that in this book and that first book, Massey completely fails to understand the essence of these two genres. She fails to provide her leading character with a driving force that makes the reader feel compelled to keep turning the page. In both novels, the author fails to answer the question, "Who cares?" She doesn't show me why her heroine doesn't simply shrug her shoulder and say, "Well, okay. I gave it a good try, but this is simply too difficult for me. I have other things in my life to worry about." Toward the end, the books turn into thrillers with the heroine's life (and her lover's life) in danger, and this certainly alleviates that particular weakness in the plot. But why does she continue to forge on, putting herself more and more deeply into danger, instead of doing the sensible thing, leaving Japan completely if need be? She does indeed have the financial resources to do this.

In most other respects as well, "The Girl in the Box" is simply not plausible. Now of course in fact, almost no mysteries and espionage novels are credible if one stops and really thinks about them. Real life police work and real life espionage are nothing like what is shown in novels. (In real espionage, the primary method of acquiring information is by bribery.) And in many ways the reader can usually deal with this, and in fact is seldom really aware of it. But there is a certain level of plausibility required. Partly this is a question of the author's tone. In some books (to some extent the James Bond stories, and definitely so in their movie versions), the author is essentially saying to reader, "This is basically a comic book story, and I don't expect you to actually believe it."

But here, the author is expecting the reader to actually be willing to accept the possibility that there is a top secret government agency called the Organization for Cultural Intelligence, with headquarters in Langley and which may or may not be part of the CIA, and that this agency would mount a vaguely Watergate style covert spy operation against a Japanese department store because that store seems to be making too much money. This doesn't make the least bit of sense. And then we are expected to believe that as covert agent the agency chooses an American woman whose only qualification is that she looks Japanese (because she is of Japanese ancestry) and knows a little of the language, and has been given a few weeks training in the art of planting bugs. And her method of penetration is to get a job as a salesclerk in the store, with the expectation that somehow she will gain access to the top echelons of management.

The whole thing is ridiculous, and that means that the reader is going to perceive it as arbitrary. Instead of thinking, "I've got to know what happens next," I'm thinking, "So what is the author going to invent next to keep the plot going?"

I remember that at the end of "The Salaryman's Wife," my reaction was: "So that's it? THIS is what I read all those several hundred pages for?" And at the end of this one, I was thinking, "This woman Rei certainly is lucky! Without an incredible amount of blind luck, she would be dead by now. But why on earth did those Yakuza ever think that it was worthwhile chasing her?"