All She Was Worth - Softcover

Miyuki Miyabe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0395966582 ISBN 13: 9780395966587

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1999

Synopsis

Here is a deftly written thriller that is also a "deep and moody" (NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) journey through the dark side of Japan's consumer-crazed society. Ordinary people plunge into insurmountable personal debt and fall prey to dangerous webs of underground creditors-so dangerous, in fact, that murder may be the only way out. A beautiful young woman vanishes, and the detective quickly finds she is not whom she claims to be. Is she a victim, a killer, or both? In a country that tracks its citizens at every turn, how can two women claim the same identity and then disappear without a trace?

About this title

Review:

Recovering from a leg injury, a 43-year-old Tokyo police inspector named Shunsuke Honma realizes how out of touch he has become when a relative asks him to make some private inquiries into the disappearance of his fiancée. While he wasn't paying attention, it seems that everyone in the country but Honma has been caught up in a consumer feeding frenzy--going into heavy debt and declaring bankruptcy at a snowballing rate. This engrossing story of the search for happiness through shopping marks the first appearance in English of one of Japan's leading writers.

About the Author:

Miyuki Miyabe (1960–)  is a prolific author working across a broad spectrum of genres, including mysteries, crime novels, period fiction, sci-fi, and fantasies for children. Born and raised in the shitamachi section of Tokyo, with its vestiges of the old Edo-period plebeian culture, she continues to live in the area and frequently sets her stories there. She began writing fiction in her early twenties, and made her literary debut in 1987 when her short story Warera ga rinjin no hanzai (Our Neighbor's Crime) won the All Yomimono Mystery Prize for New Writers. She received the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1991 for her novel The Sleeping Dragon (tr. 2009), the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize in 1992 for her novel All She Was Worth (tr. 1996), and the Naoki Prize in 1998 for Riyū (The Reason). Her monumental 2001 novel Mohohan (The Copy Cat) won the Shiba Ryotaro Prize as well as the MEXT Award for the Arts and vaulted her to a new level of bestsellerdom. More recently, her Na mo naki doku (Nameless Poison) won the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature in 2007, and the English edition of her fantasy novel Brave Story received the Mildred L. Batchelder Award in 2008. Her recent bestsellers include the novels Soromon no gishō (Solomon's Perjury) and Petero no Sōretsu (St. Peter’s Funeral Procession). She is also well known as a video-game enthusiast. Miyabe is one of the three members of Osawa Office, along with the writers Arimasa Osawa and Natsuhiko Kyōgoku.
www.osawa-office.co.jp/write/miyabe.html

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0395966582
• ISBN 13: 9780395966587
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296