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WORK TITLE: Blue Light Yokohama
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://obregonbooks.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
https://us.macmillan.com/author/nicolasobregon * http://obregonbooks.com/about/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author.
Worked variously as an odd jobber, security steward, law editor, travel writer, post deliverer, overnight guardian, bookseller, and ice rink attendant.
AVOCATIONS:Music, movies, urban exploration, travel, buildings.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Before Nicolás Obregón launched his writing career, he traveled between different career paths. Some of his former job titles include odd jobber, security steward, law writing editor, and travel writer. Obregón has also traveled extensively from country to country. He hails originally from Madrid, but spent his youth in London. Obregón resides and works in Los Angeles, but has visited several other locations, including Japan.
Obregón’s travels in Japan serves as a major influence for his novel, Blue Light Yokohama. In an interview featured on the Guardian website, Obregón explained that he has held a deep interest in Japanese media and culture since his childhood. This lifelong appreciation became another influence for the novel. Blue Light Yokohama follows protagonist Kosuke Iwata, who has recently arrived in Tokyo to take up a case of ghastly serial murders. The perpetrator of these crimes has become known as the “Black Sun Killer,” due to the dark, sun-shaped symbol that always marks the crime scene. The few murders that have been personally witnessed were committed by assailants sporting inky tattoos of the same symbol. In fact, the Japanese police force is familiar with this set of crimes beyond trying to solve it for so many years. Hideo Akashi witnessed one of the murders back in the mid-1990s, while he was sitting as a cable car passenger. A woman slaughters an attendant who holds her back from killing herself by leaping from the car, and Akashi chooses not to stop her upon noticing signs of her affiliation with the Black Sun Killer. He eventually meets a similar fate himself, leading to Iwata’s hiring and arrival.
Iwata has been tasked with helping to find the culprit, but his own personal demons may impede upon his progress. He has developed a deep preoccupation toward the classic Japanese song, Blue Light Yokohama (also the novel’s namesake), and struggles with nightmares and insomnia. Nevertheless, he proceeds in trying to close the wide open case before another victim can be claimed. He is joined by a coworker, Noriko Sakai.
Iwata tries to get to the bottom of the similarities between each of the murder victims first and foremost. He and Sakai first take a look at one family, who was slain at home. The killer plucked the heart from the family patriarch’s body, and hacked all of his victims to pieces. Evidence suggests that the family was being subjected to harassment in various forms prior to their deaths. The odds are already against Iwata in several ways. He is already new to the police force, but they do not trust him because he has spent a considerable amount of time in America, where he went to school and settled down with a family. Furthermore, what few clues he and Sakai are able to gather seem to lead them nowhere. More and more murders are discovered as the book progresses, showing that time is not on their side. In their attempts to trace connections between the sprawling trail of victims and receive more support from their department, Sakai and Iwata end up having to leave Tokyo and travel to other prefectures and countries to gather more information. Evidence may suggest that there’s a missing link to how the murders are intertwined. In the meantime, Iwata also struggles with the various scars left from his past. BookPage contributor Bruce Tierney remarked: “Blue Light Yokohama is nicely done for a first book; it’s nicely done, period.” In an issue of Library Journal, Jordan Foster expressed that the book succeeds in “establishing Obregon as a fresh, up-and-coming voice in crime fiction.” Jane Murphy, a reviewer in Booklist, wrote: “This moody noir by debut author Obregon succeeds on many levels.” A Publishers Weekly contributor commented: “[T]he book’s real strength is Iwata, a compellingly tormented lead, whose demons don’t prevent him from doggedly pursuing the truth.” A writer in one issue of Kirkus Reviews stated: “Obregon’s full-bodied prose is by turns gritty and poetic, and it’s consistently energetic.” Katherine Tomlinson, a writer on the Criminal Element website, commented: “Fans of noir will delight in the tough-edged dialogue and the unsentimental characters.” She added: “Obregón is definitely an up-and-coming writer to watch.” Star 2 contributor Tan Shiow Chin said: “The investigation of the murders is fairly absorbing and well-paced, with Obregon dropping various clues along the way for readers to make their own deductions.” On the Crime Fiction Lover blog, Vicki Weisfeld suggested: “If you enjoy an immersive police procedural with an exotic setting, like these other notable books from Japan, you’ll love Blue Light Yokohama.” Hilary Williamson, a writer on the BookLoons blog, remarked that Blue Light Yokohama “is certainly engrossing.” She also said: “It always makes my day to discover a new author I plan to follow.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 15, 2017, Jane Murphy, review of Blue Light Yokohama, p. 31.
BookPage, March, 2017, Bruce Tierney, “Black sun rising over Tokyo,” review of Blue Light Yokohama, p. 6.
Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2017, review of Blue Light Yokohama.
Library Journal, February 1, 2017, Jordan Foster, “Mystery,” review of Blue Light Yokohama, p. 51.
Publishers Weekly, January 23, 2017, review of Blue Light Yokohama, p. 57.
ONLINE
BookLoons, http://www.bookloons.com/ (October 1, 2017), Hilary Williamson, review of Blue Light Yokohama.
Crime Fiction Lover, https://crimefictionlover.com/ (January 28, 2017), Vicki Weisfeld, review of Blue Light Yokohama.
Criminal Element, https://www.criminalelement.com/ (March 7, 2017), Katherine Tomlinson, review of Blue Light Yokohama.
Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/ (March 3, 2017), Robert Hull, “Nicolás Obregón: ‘Tokyo is a million cities … and it’s full of secrets,’” author interview.
Japan Times, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ (March 18, 2017), Iain Maloney, review of Blue Light Yokohama.
Nicolás Obregón Website, http://obregonbooks.com (October 4, 2017), author profile.
Penguin Website, https://www.penguin.co.uk/ (October 4, 2017), “Everything you need to know about Nicolás Obregón”; Nicolás Obregón, “Nicolás Obregón on the influence of Truman Capote and creative nonfiction.”
Star 2, http://www.star2.com/ (June 8, 2017), Tan Shiow Chin, review of Blue Light Yokohama.*
Nicolás Obregón is a Londoner, a Madrileño, and a full-time writer. He has worked as a security steward, a travel writer, an overnight guardian, an ice rink attendant, a bookseller, a post boy, an editor in legal publishing, and an odd-jobs man for a failed mineral water company. (Not in that order).
His first novel, Blue Light Yokohama, was published in 2017 across the world. It was conceived while travelling on a bullet train from Hiroshima to Kyoto.
Influences include Eduardo Sacheri; Manuel Rivas; Martin Cruz Smith; Natsuo Kirino; Ryu Murakami; David Mitchell; Yuri Herrera; Raymond Chandler; Joan Aiken; Richard Matheson; Anaïs Nin; Gabriel García Márquez; Thomas Harris; Carson McCullers; Donna Tartt; Melvin Burgess; Truman Capote; Richard Laymon; JT LeRoy / Laura Albert; John Hersey; Philip K. Dick; and Seichō Matsumoto.
Beyond books, he's into movies, buildings, travel, and urbex. Music he likes includes Motown, The Smiths, Arthur Russell, Van Morrison, Prince, and Nina Simone. Lately, he's been listening to Devendra Banhart, León Larregui, and Colter Wall.
The sequel to Blue Light Yokohama will be released in early 2018. Obregón is currently sailing the seas of inspiration for a third Inspector Iwata novel.
Nicolás Obregón on the influence of Truman Capote and creative non-fiction
Nicolás Obregón's upcoming book, Blue Light Yokohama, tells the story of a murder so disurbing that it drove its first investigator to suicide. From Raymond Chandler to Anthony Burgess, the author picks the five books that most influenced him.
image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/catalogue/pim/editions/346/9780241954355/cover.jpg.rendition.242.374.png
Farewell, My Love
By Raymond Chandler
When Raymond Chandler is called to mind, people often point to his unique use of description — he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food, etc. I understand why it gets so much attention, after all, when prose can be described as ‘Chandleresque,’ it makes sense. But I think the fact that his writing is so witty can actually mask its real underlying quality and the less obvious similes can be overlooked. There’s a simple genius to gun barrels being likened to the mouth of 2nd Street Bridge, or the eyes of a woman compared to strange sins. But as a kid, what I really fell in love with were his quieter, more reflective passages — particularly those blunt yet melancholic monographs of Los Angeles:
‘When I got home I mixed a stiff one and stood by the open window in the living room and sipped it and listened to the groundswell of traffic on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and looked at the glare of the big angry city hanging over the shoulder of the hills through which the boulevard had been cut. Far off the banshee wail of police or fire sirens rose and fell, never for very long completely silent. Twenty four hours a day somebody is running, somebody else is trying to catch him. Out there in the night of a thousand crimes, people were dying, being maimed, cut by flying glass, crushed against steering wheels or under heavy tires. People were being beaten, robbed, strangled, raped, and murdered. People were hungry, sick; bored, desperate with loneliness or remorse or fear, angry, cruel, feverish, shaken by sobs. A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit and what your own private score is. I didn't have one. I didn't care. I finished the drink and went to bed.’
Picking just one title is no easy task but, for me, when it comes to the mystery genre, Farewell, My Lovely is the classic of classics — seediness, seduction, scores — it’s all there. If the planet were suddenly doomed tomorrow and little time capsules were sent into space to preserve human culture, this book would get my vote for the one marked crime fiction.
image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/catalogue/pim/editions/119/9780241956830/cover.jpg.rendition.242.374.png
In Cold Blood
By Truman Capote
One of the most influential books of my life, without a doubt. The genesis of my own novel centres on a real-life family murder (though it remains unsolved almost twenty years on) and while mine is purely fiction, the idea of creative non-fiction and the handling of real events through story-telling has always fascinated me. Whenever I return to Capote’s masterpiece, the prose is so carefully put-together, so exquisite, that I find myself forgetting real people died. Upon its release, much was made of Capote’s blending of truth and writing flair (I believe he called it ‘faction’) but today readers are no strangers to the genre of narrative history. Yet In Cold Blood stands apart, to this day.
To borrow Kate Colquhoun’s description, it’s a book ‘much-copied, rarely bettered.’
image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/catalogue/pim/editions/248/9780241951446/cover.jpg.rendition.242.374.png
A Clockwork Orange
By Anthony Burgess
‘Dystopian’ and ‘nightmarish’ are often the words applied to Burgess’s’ masterwork. (Also the more tiresome term ‘controversial’ — an empty word if ever there was one). Yet reading this as a teenager, what really bewitched me was the allure of the protagonist, Alex. Immediately, he’s charming and cheerful, yet he quickly he reveals himself as, first a bully, then a violent rapist with no sense of human empathy. He is absolutely free of responsibility and, as such, a fascinating narrator, telling us all the while he is our faithful friend and brother. Even the opening sentence conveys the unsettling mixture of dread and excitement in peering into Alex’s world — What’s it going to be then, eh? — as though he and his Droogs are some kind of retro-futuristic urban pirates. Of course, there’s also the joyous originality of Burgess’s’ language to be savoured:
‘But poor old Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna with his rot wide open like a kid who'd never viddied any such thing before, and he said: "What's on them, I wonder. What would be up there on things like that?" I nudged him hard, saying: "Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them. There'll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing.’
While set in a city of fictional streets and housing blocks, Burgess has ultimately created one of the visceral, compelling and unsettling meditations on law, punishment and free will available in print today. Alex never gives us easy answers. But nor does he shy away from what he is. For my money, the finest anti-hero ever committed to paper.
image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/catalogue/pim/editions/472/9780141184999/cover.jpg.rendition.242.374.png
One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Gabriel García Márquez
Mark Twain once described classic books as those which people praise but don’t read. Yet in Márquez lies one of the clearest rebuttals to Twain’s quip; he is that rare breed of author who is universally loved by readers and critics alike. Even the President of Colombia called Márquez "the greatest Colombian who ever lived.”
Not for nothing does One Hundred Years of Solitude take its place amongst the finest and most important works of literature of the 20th Century. I think my reaction was the same as that of so many who first pick up this book. Like nothing I had read before, I was mesmerised by Márquez’s ability to intermingle the mundane and the magical, every line of prose cutting and at once beautiful, every other line surreal but also somehow still firmly-rooted to reality. Consider the way he describes a priest collecting for the construction of a church:
'He went everywhere begging alms with a copper dish. They gave him a large amount, but he wanted more, because the church had to have a bell that would raise the drowned up to the surface of the water. He pleaded so much that he lost his voice. His bones began to fill with words.'
I find myself constantly re-reading lines, losing myself in the language, completely enamoured in the mysticism of Macondo, the fictional town where the novel takes place. A shining exemplar of the grandiosity of story-telling, Márquez weaves so much into this world — family, solitude, war, love, spirituality, politics, Latin America, humanity itself — by the time you get to the end, you can scarcely believe it’s over. But long after it is, the words of Márquez will fill your bones.
In The Miso Soup
By Ryu Murakami
A terrifying and beautifully-written book about a tourist guide, Kenji, who is contracted by Frank, a strange American with plastic in his face, to show him a good time in Tokyo’s sex scene. Kenji is disturbed by Frank from the off, wondering if he’s responsible for the gruesome murder reported in the news. I think The Guardian described it as ‘like script notes for American Psycho — the Holiday Abroad,’ but while the two books do share some themes, I think they’re very different experiences. It’s true that In the Miso Soup does have shocking grotesquerie on the page, but it’s also a philosophical book, funny, contemplative, quickly addictive, lonely. In Frank, I feel Murakami has created one of the greatest antagonists in fiction. And for all of his exploits and disturbing traits, what’s really so unsettling and compelling about this book is that, ultimately, Kenji tries to understand him.
Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/find-your-next-read/five-books/2016/dec/books-that-influenced-nicolas-obregon/#1Pbkz1yHZ84oZess.99
Everything you need to know about Nicolás Obregón
'My fantasy dinner party? I’d serve Semtex soufflé followed by arsenic arrabbiata. No, I’m kidding… I’d never serve soufflé with a pasta dish.'
What did you do before you were a writer?
A ridiculous number of jobs. A security steward, a travel writer, an overnight guardian, an ice rink attendant, a bookseller, a post boy, an odd-jobs man for a failed mineral water company and an editor in legal publishing. The last one was the worst one. The best one (other than my current job) was probably being a travel writer. Though I did quite like giving people their post.
image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/catalogue/pim/editions/289/9780718187026/cover.jpg.rendition.186.288.png
Blue Light Yokohama
Nicolás Obregón
When did you know you wanted to write?
I can tell you the exact moment, in fact. When I was a kid, maybe eight years old, we had a (mandatory) book-lending club at school. Basically, you had to bring in a book and read out the first page. If people liked it, they’d put their names down to borrow it. I was nervous because I hadn’t really been in London all that long and my English wasn’t perfect, plus I was a shy kid anyway. So reading out loud was obviously daunting for me. In the end I brought in my favourite book at the time, Dinotopia by James Gurney, about a land where humans and dinosaurs live in peaceful interdependence. When the day came, I read out the first few pages: a father and his son are shipwrecked on a beach, then they hear strange noises coming towards them through the jungle. At the end of the page, I turned the book round to show the illustration of these massive dinosaurs breaking through the foliage. To this day, I remember the faces of my classmates, eyes wide, mouths open. They were completely transfixed. In that moment I remember realising that someone actually got to do that for a living, it was actually their job to create those feelings. Looking at those gawping little faces, that’s when I thought: ‘Yeah, that’ll do, that’s what I want to do when I grow up.’
Where do you live now?
Los Angeles. It’s quite trippy because ever since I was a kid I’ve been fascinated by it and now I live here. But as a writer, it’s a great place to be, not least because the book I’m writing is (half) set here. Mind you, whenever I tell people back in London that I live in LA, they tend say things like ‘ohhh, hark at you’ and ‘you’ve come a long way from Kentish Town.’ I think, perhaps, because they’re imagining me doing yoga on rooftops or rubbing shoulders with celebrities. But that’s a bit like saying you live in the UK and people assuming you own a pack of corgis and ride around in a horse-driven carriage on your way to tea. Of course, LA does have the juice cleanses, the celebrities and the over-conceptualised coffee houses and whatnot. But that’s just one little slice of what is a vast, strange, almost indefinable place with just so many beautiful and ugly things. It’s not quite home yet - that will probably always be London -but I definitely feel like an adopted Angeleno. That said, I do miss Prêt à Manger and hearing the word ‘mug’ used pejoratively.
Who is your favourite fictional character and why?
I grew up loving Philip Marlowe and Clarice Starling. Also, I remember being fascinated by Alex from A Clockwork Orange as a teenager — the idea that antagonists can still somehow be empathetic characters, even when they’re almost irredeemable. But if I had to pick only one, I’d go for Frank from Ryu Murakami’s book, In the Miso Soup. It’s about a young Japanese ‘nightlife’ guide for foreigners, Kenji, who is contracted by Frank, a strange, plastic-faced American who wants to explore Tokyo’s hostess scene. I think anyone who has read the book will understand my choice — he’s terrifying, pathetic, fascinating, compelling. In a word, unforgettable. The sort of character that you find yourself thinking about from time to time, years after reading.
What are you reading at the moment?
The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera.
The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow.
I’ll Sell You a Dog by Juan Pablo Villalobos.
Courage, Resistance, and Women in Ciudad Juárez: Challenges to Militarization by Kathleen Staudt and Zulma Y. Méndez.
Basically, lots on Mexico and dogs, it seems.
image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/prh-consumer/penguin/articles/in-conversation-with/interview/2016/dec/nic%20obregon%20%C2%A9billwaters%20NO-18.jpg
Who would you invite to your fantasy dinner party and what would you serve?
Theresa May, Marine Le Pen, and Mariano Rajoy. I’d serve Semtex soufflé followed by arsenic arrabbiata. No, I’m kidding… I’d never serve soufflé with a pasta dish. To be honest I don’t think I’d make a great dinner host — I don’t actually have a dining table. Interesting fact for you, though: Marine Le Pen isn’t really called Marine. But both she and John Wayne have the same real first name…
Not many people know this, but I’m very good at…
I’m quite decent at accents? Lately, I’ve been trying to do Bostonian, which is really hard. Though my pièce de résistance has to be my impression of my dad which, if you can imagine it, is basically a perfect cross between Antonio Banderas and Danny Dyer. Oh, and I retain pointless trivia about eighties action films like you wouldn’t believe. What else? I once had a go at David Cameron on Spanish national radio. I’m not sure if it was very good? But it was pretty blistering. He probably still wakes up in the middle of the night sweating about it.
image: https://www.penguin.co.uk/content/dam/prh-consumer/penguin/articles/in-conversation-with/interview/2016/dec/nic%20obregon%20%C2%A9billwaters%20NO-69.jpg
Where do you write?
The Los Angeles Public Library, my flat, a few cafés throughout the Downtown Los Angeles area. Sometimes in the garden of Cafecito Organico near Silver Lake, my favourite little spot in town. Free tip for writers: cafés where you have to give your name when you order are great places to pick up character names!
Do you have any writing rituals?
I start writing at around 9am. Then there’s the daily period of self-doubt and existential crisis at around 11am, which I solve with coffee and pictures of dogs looking intrepid. I get back on it and go till 7pm. No, I suppose my only real rituals are reading a lot, a thorough research period, and a detailed writing plan before I begin drafts. Otherwise it’s like that nightmare where you announce to a room that you’re going to juggle and immediately you realise you’ve never done it before. But those aren’t really rituals, are they? Oh, I know one. I write better without any socks on.
How would you define the role of the writer?
To make people feel things and/or think about things. Ideally, to do that well.
What’s the most useful piece of advice about writing you’ve been given?
“It doesn’t really matter so much what it’s about - it just has to make me care.”
Shout out to my GCSE English teacher on that one.
And finally, what’s the one question you wish someone would ask you?
Er, would you like tickets to see Stewart Lee?
Answer: Yes please.
Mind you, I suppose the Union Chapel in Islington is quite a way to go these days.
Read more at https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/in-conversation/interviews/2016/dec/nicolas-obregon/#d6YIxjJta9SAEYbK.99
Nicolás Obregón: ‘Tokyo is a million cities … and it’s full of secrets’
A city that can be ‘Blade Runner and old Japan all at once’ inspired Blue Light Yokohama novelist Nicolás Obregón – who is in thrall to Tokyo’s towers, street food and quiet corners
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Interview by Robert Hull
Friday 3 March 2017 06.10 EST Last modified on Wednesday 20 September 2017 05.39 EDT
Tokyo has magnetism, and it feels endless. What hits you first is the scale. There’s the neon signs, the ancient temples, the skyscraper skylines, all of it mixed together. In the metro area there are more than 35 million people; that’s like taking two-thirds of England and putting it into one city – and then expecting the trains to run on time and the traffic to flow.
I grew up in Madrid and London and now live in LA, but Tokyo is my spiritual homeland. I grew up with Japanese cartoons, comics and video games and was strongly drawn to the country from as far back as I can remember; they were my earliest experiences of storytelling, so it’s perhaps no surprise I ended up writing my novel, Blue Light Yokohama, in Tokyo.
Nicolás Obregón in Tokyo.
Nicolás Obregón in Tokyo. Photograph: Jesus Rodriguez Lluch
Tokyoites are fond of reminding people there are more Michelin-stars there than in London and Paris. Meals don’t have to be expensive to be good, though. On a recent trip, my girlfriend and I visited Jigokudani snow monkey park and, while waiting for the bus to Tokyo, ended up eating in what was essentially a man’s house. He made us ramen and watched TV with his kids while we ate. You can’t Google or Street View things like that.
When I first visited in 2010 I was told by a salaryman in a bathhouse that “Tokyo is a million cities”. It seems that way. Harajuku on a Saturday is, essentially, a teenage catwalk with people in the latest fashions swarming all around; but it’s only a 10-minute walk to the Meiji Jingu shrine, where there may be a traditional wedding with a bride in an incredible white kimono and headpiece and priests wearing clogs.
A wedding ceremony at Meiji Jingu shrine.
A wedding ceremony at Meiji Jingu shrine. Photograph: Sira Anamwong/Getty
Todoroki Ravine park is one of the Tokyo’s most beautiful sights but is easy to miss. It’s a surprisingly leafy city full of secrets. The park is actually a green secluded lane that flanks a river and has stone carvings, old bridges and bamboo groves. While walking you can smell moss and hear the bells of a temple.
I’d choose a trip to Mount Takao over Mount Fuji. It’s a beautiful and not-too-taxing route up and there’s a beer garden at the top. Also, if you go to one of the sushi bars just before they close, they’ll usually load up the plate, as fishery laws mean there’s a time limit on how long it can be served for.
Todoroki Ravine park, Setagaya, Tokyo Japan.
Todoroki Ravine park, Setagaya. Photograph: Alamy
Rainbow bridge is illuminated by solar power and spectacular when it’s lit up – it’s my favourite view in Tokyo. Those who don’t mind heights can cross it on foot and see glittering vistas of the city, while the water below is lit by the reflected neon of passing party boats.
Visitors shouldn’t worry that Tokyo will be overwhelming, or you won’t understand anything if you don’t speak Japanese. Many signs are in English and people will fall over themselves to help you. Pick up either a Suica or a Pasmo card: they’re similar to London’s Oyster travelcard, but in Japan they can be used to buy things in shops, too. The official Go Tokyo website is handy for the essentials and has apps for exploring the city, including a subway journey planer. The website Tokyo Free Guide arranges free walking tours, too.
If you don’t fancy starting the day at 3am, give Tsukiji fish market a miss and visit the Metropolitan Government Building Observatory instead. It’s free, and so tall your ears will pop in the lift to the top. There are views out to Mount Fuji, it has a cool gift shop and is just as beautiful by day as at night.
Market stall in Yakitori Alley/Memory Lane in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Market stall in Yakitori Alley/Memory Lane in Shinjuku. Photograph: Annapurna Mellor/Getty
Yakitori is the place for street food, especially Memory Lane. Much of it consists of grilled meat on skewers that’s salted and glazed. Memory Lane (or Piss Alley, depending on who you ask) has red lanterns and exposed wires, all crammed beneath train arches; it’s Blade Runner and old Japan all at once.
There’s a photo of me and a friend sitting by the river in Yokohama with a beer looking out at the neon, it’s my favourite shot from my first trip. It was the first “extreme destination” assignment I’d been sent on as a writer for Which? travel magazine. I was in my mid-20s and so excited. The tour group I was with were all older, so I bonded with the guide, a French guy who had married a Japanese woman. Neon illuminates the water and Yokohama’s ferris wheel is in the background. We’re deep in conversation, but both of us are looking out to the water.
Nicolás Obregón and his friend look at the Tokyo skyline at night.
Nicolás Obregón and his friend looking at the Tokyo skyline. Photograph: Nicolás Obregón
My obsession with capturing the spirit of Tokyo on page means my relationship with it is very special – even though the city is oblivious! I spent two years researching Blue Light Yokohama, which shares its title with a love song, by Ayumi Ishida that was number one in Japan over Christmas 1968. Yokohama used to have gas streetlamps and they glowed blue. The lyrics are a bit eerie because, instead of singing about her lover, Ishida is singing to the city instead.
• Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolás Obregón is out now (Michael Joseph, £12.99). To order a copy for £11.04, including UK p&p, visit bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846
NICOLAS OBREGON
Nicolas Obregon
Bill Waters
NICOLAS OBREGON is British, born of Spanish parents, and grew up between London and Madrid. Currently an editor for a legal publishing company, he previously worked as a travel writer and gained extensive experience of Japan. Obregon lives in the UK and Blue Light Yokohama is his first novel.
Nicolas Obregon
Black sun rising over Tokyo
Bruce Tierney
BookPage. (Mar. 2017): p6.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 BookPage
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One of my favorite things about this job is bringing a new writer to the attention of readers, and it is particularly true in the case of Nicolas Obregon, whose debut novel, Blue Light Yokohama (Minotaur, $25.99, 416 pages, ISBN 9781250110480), is set in my home of a dozen years, metro Tokyo. Obregon balances the key compo nents of modern detective fiction seamlessly: a damaged hero, the requisite layer of urban grittiness, a possible love interest, a taunting serial killer and a series of frustrating, misleading clues. The killings bear an eerie resemblance to earlier unsolved murders in Tokyo; the hearts are ripped from the victims, and crude, sooty drawings of the sun are left at the scene. The Black Sun Killer, as the press quickly dubs him, is proving more of an embarrassment to the police department with each passing day, and pressure is put on the investigators to make some progress in the case. But with pressure comes mistakes, and when one is dealing with a serial killer, mistakes can be deadly. Obregon's descriptions of Tokyo are spot-on as he leads the reader through the city in search of an exceptionally clever and elusive killer. Blue Light Yokohama is nicely done for a first book; it's nicely done, period.
Mystery
Jordan Foster
Library Journal. 142.2 (Feb. 1, 2017): p51.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
* Obregon, Nicolas. Blue Light Yokohama. Minotaur: St. Martin's. Mar. 2017. 416p. ISBN 9781250110480. $25.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250110497. M
A detective with a troubled past plus a serial killer are often ingredients for a been-there-done-that thriller. Not so with Obregon's tense, atmospheric Tokyo-set debut, which pulses with a dark energy all its own. Newly reinstated homicide cop Iwata is partnered with another inspector who makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with him (and neither does the Tokyo brass). Luckily, or not, the pair soon catch a gruesome case that requires their full attention: the murder of an entire family with ritualistic overtones, the particularly strange symbol of a black sun left at the crime scene. The victims had held a plethora of secrets, none of them good. A stalker had the teenage daughter in (presumably) his sights. The father was being harassed at work. And the killer isn't done. Iwata suffers from his own private torment--from nightmares that plague the little sleep he gets--to the near-constant repetition of the titular song in his head. VERDICT This gritty story, in what will hopefully become a new series, has roots in American noir yet fully embraces its Japanese setting, establishing Obregon as a fresh, up-and-coming voice in crime fiction.
Blue Light Yokohama
Jane Murphy
Booklist.
113.12 (Feb. 15, 2017): p31.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
Blue Light Yokohama. By Nicolas Obregon. Mar. 2017. 362p. Minotaur, $25.99 (9781250110480); e-book, $12.99
(9781250110497).
Inspector Kosuke Iwata has been transferred to Tokyo Homicide, and it appears from the start that he has been set up to
fail. He is as signed a case involving the ritualistic murder of an entire family. The previous detective committed
suicide. The story was inspired by an actual unsolved crime in 2000. The author includes some of the "haunting
curiosities" from that event and adds the cultlike element of the image of a large black sun. These are not the first, nor
the last, killings by the Black Sun Killer, and Iwata must determine how the victims were connected before he can
identify the dark forces at work. Iwata is a man beset by many devils of his own. He is obsessed with the song "Blue
Light Yokohama," and lines relating to two troubling backstories about his earlier life are frequent, at times distracting
from what is otherwise a compelling narrative. This moody noir by debut author Obregon succeeds on many levels,
although the ending seems just a bit too upbeat for the genre.--Jane Murphy
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
Murphy, Jane. "Blue Light Yokohama." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2017, p. 31. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485442507&it=r&asid=ef30eb21f9bcc2378dff24f2ffce616d.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A485442507
9/30/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Blue Light Yokohama
Publishers Weekly.
264.4 (Jan. 23, 2017): p57.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Blue Light Yokohama
Nicolas Obregon. Minotaur, $25.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-250-11048-0
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
After a tantalizing prologue, Obregon maintains a high level of suspense throughout his superior fiction debut, an
intricately constructed whodunit that doesn't sacrifice depth of characterization for plot. One day in 1996, policeman
Hideo Akashi and his wife are riding a cable car in the Nagasaki Prefecture when a woman attempts to open the car
door. After stabbing the attendant who tries to stop her, she succeeds in opening the door and jumps out. Akashi
manages to grab her by the arm, but after seeing a tattoo on her wrist of a large black sun, he lets her plummet to her
death. Fifteen years later, Akashi, a respected Tokyo police inspector, jumps to his death off a bridge. Akashi had been
investigating the murders of the Kaneshiros, parents and two children, who were butchered in their home by a killer
who removed the father's heart. The case passes to Inspector Iwata, who notices a drawing of a black sun on the ceiling
of the bedroom where one of the victims was found. While the complex mystery itself will keep readers turning pages,
the book's real strength is Iwata, a compellingly tormented lead, whose demons don't prevent him from doggedly
pursuing the truth. Agent: Daniel Kirschen, ICM Partners. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Blue Light Yokohama." Publishers Weekly, 23 Jan. 2017, p. 57. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479714161&it=r&asid=424cf715e1ed2635ed930d216c8a8a6f.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A479714161
9/30/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
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Obregon, Nicolas: BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Obregon, Nicolas BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA Minotaur (Adult Fiction) $25.99 3, 7 ISBN: 978-1-250-11048-0
A tough Tokyo detective faces resistance in his new post as he faces off against a brutal and taunting serial
killer.Workaholic police inspector Iwata faces resistance from the moment he arrives at Tokyo's Division One. Senior
inspector Isao Shindo questions his education, his experience, and his readiness for the grittiness of the Tokyo PD.
Indeed, Iwata is plagued by nightmares. Luckily for him and the reader, Iwata is partnered with Sakai, a brash female
detective. Their first case, from a large stack of the unsolved, is the murder of the Korean Kaneshiro family, killed in
their home. The four family members were all brutally butchered and the father's heart removed. The only clue is a
jagged black sun the killer etched on the ceiling in sooty smudges. Leads come in from various directions. The teenage
Takako Kaneshiro had a perverted stalker; her father, Tsunemasa, was being harassed at work; the family stood in the
way of a housing development represented by a scary ex-con named Kiyota. More murders follow, with the sun
symbol left behind as a calling card, and the press labels the perp The Black Sun Killer. Iwata and Sakai, disrespected
by the department, must fight for additional resources. Their path to the killer is long and tangled, leading far from the
city and to a former investigator who holds valuable secrets. Obregon's full-bodied prose is by turns gritty and poetic,
and it's consistently energetic. Given the terrific chemistry between the two lead detectives, here's hoping this debut
novel kicks off a new series.
Source Citation (MLA 8
th Edition)
"Obregon, Nicolas: BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Jan. 2017. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA475357486&it=r&asid=5c920212a7f7a31b9ebbda569780fd54.
Accessed 30 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A475357486
‘Blue Light Yokohama’: Crime fiction that sinks under the weight of its cliches
BY IAIN MALONEY
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES
MAR 18, 2017 ARTICLE HISTORY PRINT SHARE
“Blue Light Yokohama” is optimistically billed as the first in a new crime series. While the plot twists are of the caliber required for successful crime fiction, this debut is riddled with cliches, errors and inconsistencies. Anyone familiar with Japanese culture or crime fiction will struggle to reach the end in the face of mounting frustration.
Blue Light Yokohama, by Nicolas Obregon.
448 pages
PENGUIN, Fiction.
The narrative is full of anachronisms. Japanese police officers wink at each other, shake hands, make casual references to U.S. pop culture and speak like U.S. TV cops. It’s often only the names that remind us this is set in Tokyo. The characters certainly don’t come across as Japanese. Rendering non-English speech is always tricky for authors, but here Obregon has laced the standard police talk with slang and expletives that seem ridiculous given the context.
Genre markers abound. The outsider cop? Check. The talented female officer dealing with sexism on the job? Check. Corruption? Check. Red-herring petty criminals, no-good thugs, Jackson Pollock references at a murder scene? Check, check, check.
Writers who have spent time in Japan are often tempted to data-dump, and Obregon is guilty of this. From underwear-stealing perverts to Korean-hating racists via misanthropic religious cults, all the usual bases are touched. Perhaps now that Obregon has gotten it out of his system, the next book will be more nuanced, but without closer attention to detail, it’s hard to see his Inspector Iwata ever appealing to readers in Japan.
FRESH MEAT
Review: Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolás Obregón
KATHERINE TOMLINSON
Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolas Obregon
Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolas Obregon
Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolás Obregón is a compelling, brilliantly moody, and layered novel that's sure to be one of the most talked about debuts in 2017 (available March 7, 2017).
Slogans, symbols, and suicide. Are they connected? If so, how?
“This is what Japan should be,” insists an insurance company slogan. “Creating Tomorrow Together,” boasts another. Vivus Construction offers, “The Good Life.”
But it’s not just companies that encapsulate their mission statements in catchy phrases and pithy sayings. A new religious movement is sweeping Japan, and bible quotes are on everyone’s lips. “The lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?” When does scripture become slogan?
And what are we to make of the oft-repeated line, “The lights of Tokyo are so pretty”? Is that a reference to the soothing blue lights being installed on the subway lines in an attempt to lower the suicide rate? And what of the black sun symbol that appears in the book’s opening, when a severely troubled woman commits suicide, and then reappears at the sight of a particularly grisly murder?
That murder has connections to the suicide that opens the book, an event that involved a police inspector who has now committed suicide himself. His successor—an outsider that nobody wants in Tokyo, much less working the case—is left to track down the significance of all these bits and pieces that he’s certain are connected. Because this is Tokyo, and everything is connected.
The Tokyo cityscape stretched out below him, cities within cities, angles incalculable. Thirty-five million existences crammed into circadian rhythms of concrete and cables. Immense infrastructure, never-ending networks—all of it delicate as hummingbird heartbeats.
“Tokyo is a million cities and one city all at once,” muses a cop, and Iwata—the haunted, American-educated detective who has inherited the work of the “Black Sun Killer”—can only assume that he’s living in one of the worst cities in the city. The crime’s he’s investigating are gruesome. And the people he’s investigating? They’re not nice people.
The room smelled of cigar smoke, aftershave, and feet. A small, smiling man in his fifties with thick, black hair slicked back sat at a bureau too big for him. His spectacles were too small for his wide, coin-like face.
“Yes?”
His voice was inquisitive, pleasantly surprised at the young woman standing before him. When Sakai held up her police credentials, his expression did not change.
“Assistant Inspector Sakai. Division One.”
“My name is Gorō Onaga. Please sit.”
Signed portraits of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Saddam Hussein sat on Onaga’s desk, facing outward toward the visitor. Another photograph showed Onaga warmly embracing the former Minister for Security. Above his chair, a huge portrait of Yukio Mishima, handsome and muscular, looked down at Sakai. Beneath the author’s folded arms ran a quote of his in severe, dark text.
PERFECT PURITY IS POSSIBLE IF YOU TURN YOUR LIFE INTO A LINE OF POETRY WRITTEN WITH A SPLASH OF BLOOD.
Nicolás Obregón is a British-Spanish writer who has infused his first novel with a kinetic sense of the many different sides of a city he loves. Like a kaleidoscope, the view shifts from angle to angle as the inhabitants try to impose order on the chaotic infrastructure. “Truth. Sincerity. Respect. Love,” reads one slogan, and in the end, Iwata’s life comes down to those four words.
Fans of noir will delight in the tough-edged dialogue and the unsentimental characters. The puzzle is solid, and the investigation absorbing. And all the suicides, slogans, and symbols are explained. Obregón is definitely an up-and-coming writer to watch.
Review: Blue Light Yokohama
JUNE 9, 2017 BOOK REVIEWS, BOOKS, CULTURE
BY TAN SHIOW CHIN
Mark Twain famously said “truth is stranger than fiction” – but not many people are familiar with the full quote, which continues: “but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”
On Dec 30, 2000, the Miyazawa family were murdered in their home in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward – father Mikio, 44, mother Yasuko, 41, daughter Niina, eight, and son Rei, six.
The killer stayed on in the house for hours after the murders, spending some of his time eating ice cream and using the computer, before leaving near dawn the next morning. Despite the numerous clues uncovered and 246,044 police investigators deployed on the case since 2000 – there are still 40 officers currently assigned to the case – the murderer remains unidentified.
An old newspaper article about this case caught author Nicolas Obregon’s eye during his first trip to Japan in 2010 and is the basis of his debut novel, Blue Light Yokohama.
This crime story revolves around Inspector Kosuke Iwata, a troubled police officer who has just been transferred to the homicide division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s headquarters in Shinjuku. With the division’s efforts focused on famous actress Mina Fong’s murder, Iwata and fellow new transfer Assistant Inspector Noriko Sakai are dumped with the strange murder of the Kaneshiro family.
image: http://www1.star2.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/str2_ciyokohamaR_ma_1.jpg
Blue Light Yokohama Obregon takes the known elements of the Miyazawa murder and spices them up with elements of racism and ritualistic murder.
The Korean Kaneshiro family – consisting of father Tsunemasa, mother Takako, son Seiji and daughter Hana – are not only brutally stabbed and slashed, but Tsunemasa’s heart is also removed and his body left lying in the master bedroom under the drawing of a huge black sun.
Obregon interweaves the murder investigation with reveals of protagonist Iwata’s troubled background throughout the book.
Aside from being abandoned by his mother at the age of 10 and growing up in an orphanage, Iwata’s American wife Cleo lives in a medical institution and appears to be uncommunicative. The reason for this still haunts him, as do memories of his good friend from the orphanage, Kei.
While these reveals allow readers to get to know Iwata better, they don’t really serve the mystery aspect of the story.
The investigation of the murders is fairly absorbing and well-paced, with Obregon dropping various clues along the way for readers to make their own deductions.
However, the setting, which is placed mostly in Japan with a brief foray into Hong Kong, failed to be convincing enough for me to be fully absorbed into the story.
Obregon describes himself as having been fascinated by Japan from the age of six through anime and video games. According to the author’s note at the back of the book, he has also visited Japan at least twice and read extensively on the country.
Was that enough for him to write an entire book set there?
Not for me.
His characters do not feel Japanese; you could just change their names to English ones and drop them into a Western setting, without changing anything else – including their dialogue – and it wouldn’t feel jarring at all.
This, more than anything else, kept jolting me out of the book’s world.
He is also inconsistent at times with the characters’ names, switching from last name to first without warning.
Oh, and the title?
You’ll see lines related to it scattered at frequent, and sometimes rather random, intervals throughout the text – another thing that rather annoyed me.
Overall, Obregon’s writing style is not bad, but his inexperience shows – less really is more at times – and perhaps he should stick to settings and characters that he is more intimately familiar with for now.
Blue Light Yokohama
Author: Nicolas Obregon
Publisher: Michael Joseph/Penguin, crime thriller
6 10
Summary
Inspector Kosuke Iwata and Assist Inspector Noriko Sakai, new transfers to Tokyo's homicide division, grapple with the case of the strange, ritualistic killing of an entire family.
Read more at http://www.star2.com/culture/books/book-reviews/2017/06/09/book-review-blue-light-yokohama/#WzyLhD64wPJrlbEm.99
BLUE LIGHT YOKOHAMA
January 28, 2017 Written by Vicki Weisfeld Published in iBook, Kindle, Print, Reviews 0 Permalink
Blue Light Yokohama, Nicolás ObregónWritten by Nicolas Obregon – What an entertaining debut! Told almost exclusively from the perspective of Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Inspector Kosuke Iwata, it’s a multilayered police procedural involving murder, official corruption, and dangerous secrets.
A brief prologue set in 1996 describes the death of a woman who jumped from a dangling cable car into the sea, despite the efforts of police detective Hideo Akashi to save her. Fifteen years later, Akashi – now a prominent Tokyo police detective – is investigating the quadruple murder of a Korean family. In the midst of his investigation, he commits suicide by jumping off Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge. No-one knows why. The theme of falling pervades the novel and ties together many of its strands, past and present.
The brass at the police department asks its newest detective, US-trained (and therefore highly suspect) Iwata to pick up where Akashi left off. Iwata is aided by Assistant Inspector Sakai, transferred from the Missing Persons department to work with him. These two inexperienced homicide detectives are assigned such a major murder case because the department is short-handed, having lost Akashi, and is focused instead on another of his cases, the mysterious death of high-profile actress Mina Fong. A little racism creeps in, as well; as Iwata’s supervisor explains: “The family were Korean, so not exactly front-page news.”
Iwata and Sakai manage to get along rather well, considering. He is battling major demons from the present and the past, which began when his mother abandoned him in a bus station, leaving him to spend most of his childhood in an orphanage. He is haunted by his memories of those days, and the significance of his background is only gradually revealed.
Working against stereotype, Sakai is a feisty young woman whose reflexive prickliness provides a lively counterpoint of humour. At the end of an interview with the leader of a reviled super-nationalist political group, for example, she says:
‘Mr. Onaga, I hope we cross paths again. I do.’
Smiling, Onaga stood and offered his hand. ‘Oh yes, Inspector. It was a pleasure.’
‘No, I think you misunderstand my meaning.’”
Not what you want to hear from a homicide detective!
Although the deaths of each member of the Korean family were gruesome, the most striking was that of the father, who seemed to be the killer’s principal target. Not only was his heart removed, on the ceiling over his body was an ominous charcoal drawing of a black sun the man himself made shortly before his death.
Iwata and Sakai are having difficulty getting traction in their investigation when the lonely widow of a judge is murdered. Again, her heart has been removed, and there’s a huge black sun drawn with her dead husband’s ashes.
Sakai and Iwata are anxious to understand what the link might be between these crimes, because, until they do, they can’t try to prevent any additional murders. They pursue multiple lines of inquiry, all of them interesting, and most going nowhere. Iwata exceeds his authority and travels to Hong Kong to gather information about the death of the glamorous Mina Fong’s less glamorous older sister, a presumed suicide.
The author has lived in Japan and seems to be a Japanophile. Not only does he describe the physical settings and social climates of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hong Kong with precision, but he also carefully explores Iwata’s complex interior life and motivations. The atmosphere he creates is therefore dense with possibilities. One of them is that not everyone on the police force is hoping he and Sakai succeed.
A dozen or so poetic lines repeatedly float through Iwata’s mind: “The lights of the city are so pretty; I walk and walk, swaying, like a small boat in your arms.”
You won’t learn the origins of the lines until well along, and ultimately they are the source of the book’s title. But Obregon is a more subtle writer than that, and the title also echoes an effort to prevent suicides by installing blue lights on Tokyo train station platforms. The colour blue is supposedly calming. The flashing blue of police cars, another recurrent image Obregon, would belie that assumption.
The Japanese names may take some getting used to. It’s helpful to be able to flip back and re-establish who a few of the characters are, but in general, this isn’t a problem. If you enjoy an immersive police procedural with an exotic setting, like these other notable books from Japan, you’ll love Blue Light Yokohama.
Penguin
Print/iBook/Kindle
£9.49
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
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Blue Light Yokohama
by Nicolas Obregon
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* * * Reviewed by Hilary Williamson
Here's a modern Japanese mystery by an author new to me - Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolas Obregon. In it, we meet the engagingly vulnerable Inspector Iwata, recently transferred to a Tokyo Homicide Division. Iwata is haunted by a personal tragedy that left his American wife institutionalized. He has only recently transferred to the Tokyo precinct.
Iwata and his tough talking new female partner, Noriko Sakai, are assigned to investigate the horrific slaughter of a Korean family that has barely made the news. Iwata is concerned about the ritualistic nature of the crime (the father's heart taken and a jagged black sun inscribed on the ceiling above him) and suspects a serial killer. But, as they search for answers, their investigation is hampered and eventually blocked entirely from on high - why?
Though the 1996 opening of the novel is a clue, it's not one that readers will understand until the very end. Events unfold in a cable car in which a woman in filthy clothes (accompanied by a little girl) suddenly attacks the attendant with a knife, opens the door and leaps to her death. Though police officer Hideo Akashi, who is there with his wife, tries to stop her, he fails.
Fifteen years later, Akashi handled the Korean family case but had just committed suicide before it was assigned to Iwata. He persists, despite all the obstacles placed in his way, even traveling to Hong Kong on his own dime (which gets him into deeper trouble with his Tokyo bosses). There are further deaths, with the same modus operandi. And, with help from Noriko, Iwata eventually uncovers a link to a cult, Children of the Black Sun.
There are some very big surprises before it's all over and the Black Sun Killer is identified. Iwata barely survives his investigation, which also exposes serious police corruption. We're told that the mystery was 'inspired by a real-life unsolved murder' (read The Story of the Story of Blue Light Yokohama at the end), and this fictional version is certainly engrossing. It always makes my day to discover a new author I plan to follow.