ヒトリシズカ

by Tetsuya Honda, 誉田 哲也, 上野 翔 (Narrator)

連作警察小説。
子供の姿を見たいがために現れるであろう犯人を張込む俺。
思惑通り、姿を見せた犯人を逮捕。取調べに向かう途中、庁舎の廊下で刑事から声をかけられた。
連れて行かれた部屋で、俺はこの事件に潜む1人の女の存在を聞かされる。
それは、17年にも及ぶ警察の激しい追跡劇だった。

Audible Audio

First published April 12, 2012

About the author

Associated Names:
* 誉田 哲也 (Japanese profile)
* ฮนดะ เท็ตสึยะ (Thai profile)

Reviews

[Mizuki · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy Tetsuya Honda's Reiko Himekawa series which is centered around a tough-as-nail female cop, and I think this series is one of the few hard boiled series that keeps improving itself as each book goes. However, this stand-alone book, Quiet, Alone (it's my rough translation, and the heroine's name means 'quietness' in Japanese) by the same author really doesn't work so well with me.

The concept of the story and the opening part is outstanding enough, though: a gangster is killed under mysterious condition, soon a suspect shows up and it turns out he is the one who stabbed the victim. Case closed, you think? Then you are wrong. As a curious cop digs deeper into the case, he soon realizes a young girl might be involved with the murder case.

So each of the short stories from within this book are related to this young girl, we follow the tracks she left behind from 13 years old to 31 years old, and she is always one step ahead from us and the cops.

The murder mysteries and the quest to reach for this young girl (later a young woman) and the revealing of her dark, twisted mind are rather exciting. However, I find the character's build-up very weak and inconsistent. We are told that due to the traumas she had endued in childhood, the young girl learnt to be cruel, cunning and merciless in order to survive, but we are later told that after she met a certain someone, her 9 years old half-sister, she got a 180 degree turn and now she is sacrificing herself on this certain someone's behalf? I am not convinced.

I have a feeling that Mr. Honda tried to create something similar to Journey Under the Midnight Sun, by Keigo Higashino (a melodrama novel which I consider to be only so-and-so), these two books have similar themes: abused victims turn revengeful and cruel, a beautiful woman who has a dark past, said beautiful young woman on a run from the police and her own past, leaving a trail of corpses and mysteries behind etc, but sadly he had failed.

PS: the book cover is so pretty!