The People Who Eat Darkness - 02/22/21

 Hello Travelers, 

Book 10: The People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished From the Streets of Tokyo -- and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up. (7/10)

Premise: Many foreign girls go to work in the Japanese Roppongi district. Everything from Hostess bars to massage parlors is found here. One of these girls (Lucie Blackman) goes missing, and her family is determined to find her. 

The People Who Eat Darkness, unlike No Wall Too High, was written by a native English speaker, and it shows in the writing. Richard Parry, a Englishman, worked for The Times in Japan, reporting on international news. During his time there many people went missing, but none as intriguing or as publicly as Lucie Blackman, a 21 year old English girl who went to work in Tokyo and suddenly vanished. As strange as this may sound in this book very little happens but a lot is discovered. 

The story starts with Lucie arriving in Toyko, a mix of her journal and interviews from her friends and clients fill these pages. Lucie goes to work as a hostess to pay off her debts, since the yen to pound conversion is relatively good. A hostess is simply a woman who would create conversation with Japanese business men, light their cigarettes, pour them beer, and make them feel desirable. Lucie arrives in Toyko with her friend and quickly gets a job hostessing. After meeting a client to spend an afternoon with him in promise of a cell phone she makes one last call to her friend and disappears forever.  

Soon her friend and family get involved giving this case international news coverage. The author then moves on to cover the investigation and the families involvement. The prime minister of Japan and many others get involved. But as we discover, Toyko is one of the safest cities in the world and sometime the police struggle to rise to the challenge of a case. 

Queue Joji Obara, a slimy business man who has had contact with Lucie, and seems to leave no trace behind himself. We learn a lot about Obara's past. Robert even try's to contact him and his family several times to no avail. But even so a lot is revealed about Obara and his business's, some of which is fine and some of which is much more shady. 

The book then heads to the trial of Obara, not just for one crime but for a whole handful. A lot about the Japanese justice system is discussed here, how it's similar and differentiates from the rest of the Modern World. After the trial ends the follow ups are done for a while, on how it affected the family of Lucie. Parry seemed to have good relationships with all of them, even though sometimes they obviously did not get along with eachother. 

This book is definitely a glimpse into a different world. The culture, the police work, and even the crimes seem very foreign. I found it extremely interesting, but there were times I felt like it slowed down a bit because the author had to explain how things worked differently in Japan. 

So don't get into cars with strangers, 

and remember dear readers, Stay Vivid. 

Here is my Goodread links again! 

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/115304447-ben-wilkinson