People Who Eat Darkness: Murder, Grief and a Journey into Japan's Shadows
Richard Lloyd Parry
*** Richard Lloyd Parry is the Winner of the 2018 Rathbones Folio Prize ***
In the summer of 2000, Jane Steare received the phone call every mother dreads. Her daughter Lucie Blackman - tall, blonde, and twenty-one years old - had stepped into the vastness of a Tokyo summer and disappeared forever. That winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a desolate seaside cave.
Her disappearance was mystifying. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? What did her work, as a 'hostess' in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, really involve? And could Lucie's fate be linked to the disappearance of another girl some ten years earlier?
Over the course of a decade, Richard Lloyd Parry has travelled to four continents to interview those caught up in the story and been given unprecedented access to Lucie's bitterly divided family to reveal the astonishing truth about Lucie and her fate.
Product Details
About Richard Lloyd Parry
Reviews for People Who Eat Darkness: Murder, Grief and a Journey into Japan's Shadows
David Peace Difficult to put down... impossible to forget
Minette Walters A skilful, definitive history of one of the most notorious crimes of the past decade
Sunday Times
This is In Cold Blood for our times... Everyone who has ever loved someone and held that life dear should read this stunning book, and shiver
Chris Cleave Open-minded and sympathetic, despite being driven half mad by the case, Parry, former Asia correspondent for the Independent and The Times, is the best kind of narrator of a tale that isn't just a murder case but a book that sheds light on Japan, on families, on the media, and on the insidious effects of misogyny
Blake Morrison
Guardian
This is an extraordinary book which stands as far above the 'true crime' label as Paradise Lost does above the category 'verse'... No avenue is left unexplored, no thought is too oblique to be uttered, no psychological puzzle too disturbing to be investigated
Bel Mooney
Daily Mail
A skilful, definitive history of one of the most notorious crimes of the past decade
Sunday Times
Richard Lloyd Parry has produced a work not only of page-turning intensity but also of touching sensitivity and deep insight. That he could have created something almost noble from such base material is a minor miracle of literary alchemy. The book is brilliantly written
David Pilling
Financial Times
An extraordinary book, passionately and meticulously told... I read it with my breath held and found I couldn't relax, think or get on with my life until I'd finished it
Julie Myerson Parry shows a rare compassion and a refusal to judge
Jonathan Coe
Guardian, Books of the Year