Customer Reviews

Honeymoon to Nowhere (Soho Crime)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The story was a fascinating look at a conservative Japanese culture which is steeped in tradition. The rules are much stricter than in more liberal countries. It is not only a person's ability and character that determine his/her fate, but also his/her family background. Having a "black sheep" in the family may block a person from making a respectable marriage match or joining the staff of an elite university or firm, no matter how capable or brilliant the person. Also, the author revealed fascinating details of Japanese law, such as the rules regarding inheritance and patents as well as the criminal investigation procedure itself. The mystery was very suspenseful and kept me guessing until the very end. The investigation was conducted in a steady, logical manner and built up to a dramatic conclusion. In many ways, the investigation resembled a more in depth version of an episode of the excellent TV series "Law and Order" except for the Japanese setting. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and also recommend the other two English translations of Takagi's works, namely "The Tattoo Murder case", and "The Informer". Also, fans of Takagi may also enjoy, the mystery "All she was worth", by Miyuki Miyabe.

Like the Inspector Monk series by Anne Perry, which is set in Victorian England, this book is much more character- and culture-driven than plot-driven, which may be why one reviewer complained about the slow pace. There are many similaries between 1960s Japan and Victorian England, too. It's socially unacceptable to ask pointed questions; often what people don't say is more important than what they do. Women are stereotyped as fragile flowers in need of protection, despite their behavior to the contrary. And policemen are somewhat looked down upon, as though soiled by the act of crime solving. I'd much rather read a book like this, well written and from a new, culturally unfamiliar perspective, than the 47th fast-action, formulaic potboiler by an author who's long since run out of fresh ideas.

I enjoyed the cultural differences that made the mystery story more faceted, made more so by the Australian translation. I read it in one evening. I was caught up by the charactization of Etsuko and the problem of her and her parents choice of a husband for her. Then her husband's secrets. Then his disappearance and the process of the crime being solved the the prosecutor. The pacing of the ending was too quick - a bit out of sync with the rest of the book. But otherwise an enjoyable read. Upon finishing it, I immediately ordered the other two books by the author.

I spent more than several years in Japan. I've read more than several Japanese authors. I'm an ex-investigator. I love murder mysteries. Dick Francis, and there's a Chinese author I just love to read... But, I found to no surprise that this novel was no mystery. Like Japanese telling a joke in 45 min. with a punch line Westerners are not able to comprehend, this book was the same.... without a punch-line.

SLOW...REPETITIVE....Did I say SLOW? The whole thing could have been written in 10 pages if you wanted to get wordy..... sorry, I hoped for more, but "ie".

Etsuko Ogata was a plain young Japanese woman whose father, a prominent lawyer had plans for her. A promising young member of his firm was willing to marry Etsuko, but life is perverse, and Etsuko had her eyes elsewhere. A university lecturer, Tsukamoto Yoshishiro, liked her for herself, rather than for her father's power, and she felt strongly enough in return to reject her family's pressures and marry for love. Unfortunately some took even more issue with the marriage than her family and, no sooner is she married, but she is made a widow.

Now fate intervenes - prosecutor Kirishima Saburo is assigned to the case, and his wife, Kyoko, happens to have been Etsuko's best friend. And so we follow two investigations as Akimitsu Takagi gradually unfolds a complicated story that starts out appearing as an emotional killing, and turns into something colder and more menacing. It takes both husband and wife to shake loose all the clues and eliminate a host of suspects.

Japanese mystery writers tend to focus on the endless detail of custom and manner rather than the hyperactive plotting that marks US detective fiction. If well translated all this texture provides surprising insights into Japanese character while mixing in the calculated deductions of a police procedural. Unfortunately this tale has a rather bland translation and it simply never gripped me as much as The Tattoo Murder Case, another of Takagi's stories that has come over to the US.

The mystery itself is satisfactory in all respects, but the characters never come to life. I found myself putting the book aside and reading in short spurts, which didn't contribute any clarity to the plot. I'm interested in Japanese culture enough that the book never really became tedious, but it is a clinically distant novel. If you are just seeking a gripping read you should look elsewhere.

The first quarter or so of the book, told from the point of view (not first person narration, but third person limited) of the young woman, Etsuko, who initially is unquestionably the main character, describing her state of mind during an emotional roller coaster of a time for her -- first, she's still not completely over an intense unrequited passion she'd developed for the fiancee (and now husband) of her best friend; then, her father tries to coax her to marry the junior partner in his law firm, someone she barely knows and has no feelings for; and unexpectedly, in the midst of all this, she meets another man quite by chance, and begins a relationship with him that soon blossoms into genuine love and affection on both sides -- is very involving. It is Etsuko and this man's titular honeymoon that is interrupted only hours into it by a mysterious call that summons the brand-new husband out into the night, and finds him murdered in the morning. All of this part of the story, as seen through the eyes of this not-uncomplicated, well fleshed-out character, is quite compelling.

Unfortunately, the book changes course at this point, abruptly abandoning now-bereaved heroine Etsuko's point-of-view, and instead jarringly morphing into a rather plodding procedural (very light on forensic evidence, heavy on looking into finances and inheritance issues and second-hand gossip) mostly told from the perspective of the investigating district attorney, who happens to be the very man Etsuko had previously had the unrequited crush on, although next to nothing is actually made of this fact from this point on -- neither Etsuko nor the DA ever allude to it, and it doesn't affect the investigations at all. From here on in, the novel seems to consist mainly of an endless series of conversations between the DA and the police investigator in charge of the case, in which they each report to each other the little they've respectively learned that day, and toss theories back and forth at each other, and in which it's hard to tell from paragraph to paragraph which one of the two is speaking, so bereft is the characterization afforded to them (the police inspector in particular); the DA also does this same sort of theory airing with his veteran clerk.

None of this is helped by a very clunky, overly literal translation -- it's extremely accurate to actual Japanese speech (I happen to know Japanese), but so much so that it makes for what come across as absurdly stilted dialogue, which is more distracting than anything else.

This latter three-quarters or so of the novel is also marked by an exceedingly large number of red herring sublots that, while they initially serve to create a huge pool of potential suspects, ultimately are essentially abandoned early enough that one realizes that they were, in fact, just red herrings, and almost resents (at least I did) how much attention was expended on detailed, but in the end entirely irrelevant, backstories, etc. for characters who then fade out from the story completely.

What really disappointed me, however, was the conclusion -- not the identity of the killer (indeed, I was pretty sure who it was with quite a bit of the novel to go), but an absolutely glaring problem with that person being the killer. I couldn't even vaguely explain what that huge plot hole is here without spoiling things, but I was frankly shocked that the author either missed it himself or thought people wouldn't notice (but what about his editors for goodness sakes?) It's hard to believe no one pointed it out before it was published. And to make it worse, it's something that could have been easily avoided, or fixed, with a very minor adjustment. Considering the otherwise overall very elaborately plotted and thought-out plot, it was quite disconcerting, and in fact annoying, to get to the final page and find out that this (to me, at least) very, very obvious problem with the solution was never addressed at all. As it stands, the otherwise fiendishly diabolical plot of the villain just wouldn't have worked, due to this one issue.

That, coupled with the fact that an earlier, tangential mystery -- the identity of a mysterious man who pops up a lot in the early stages of the novel -- is one that the reader (or, again, at least I) figures out INCREDIBLY early on (it's really fairly obvious), but then has to then wait in frustration for the investigators to FINALLY figure out, hundreds of pages later; the above-noted stiff and unnatural diction of the translation; and the not particularly fleshed out police and prosecutor characters who, despite that lack of real individuation, dominate the latter part of the novel, led to a rather underwhelming feeling when I finally finished Honyemoon to Nowhere.

At the same time, though, I will say that I did find the setting -- mid-60s Tokyo -- quite interesting, with its references to the many changes Japan was going through at that time, encompassing things like the confining identities women still found themselves forced into in this society in flux between tradition and change; the way Japanese citizens now in retrospect viewed, or at least talked about, the militaristic, emperor-worshiping philosophy of the war era; and the crippling effect a besmirched family history still tended to have on the life of a themselves completely innocent person in the Japan of the period.

Etsuko Ogata's father is a respected attorney and is concerned about Etsuko's future. When one of his junior partners asks for Etsuko's hand in marriage, he encourages the match. Etsuko, however, has other plans. She has become enamored of a shy university lecturer whom her family disapproves because of the young man's father's criminal record. She lies to her parents, telling them she is pregnant, and they relent, considering the circumstances. On their honeymoon night the groom receives a phone call, leaves the hotel room, and never returns. His body is found the next day. In this mystery written in the early 60's and translated from the Japanese, the protagonist is State Prosecutor Kirishima who uses classic detective procedures to discover the killer. However, the dialog and minutiae are such to drag the story to a snail's pace. Akimitsu Takagi was born in 1920. After careers in medicine and metallurgy, he was told by a fortune teller that he would write a novel. After 15 published mysteries and winning Japan's highest mystery award, he died in 1995.