マリアビートル

great premise, but the book the author wanted to write wasn't the one I wanted to read

The premise for this book is great -- a lot of hired killers end up on the same shinkansen. I was expecting a light hearted action story, with everyone getting in each others' way, accidentally foiling plans, stealing items back and forth from each other, and so on. Parts of this book are like that (and those parts are great!), but unfortunately what the author really wanted to write about was the most unpleasant character in the book, in a much more serious tone. That character is a teenage psychopath who loves to psychologically manipulate everybody around him and thinks he's super clever, and the book spends way too much time looking at things from his point of view, and he turns up a lot in the other parts as well. I absolutely hated those sections and only got through them by treating them as a speed reading exercise.

I think the good parts of this book are probably four star worthy, but the bad parts are one star level; plus I'm disappointed that the author wasted the opportunity of the premise, so overall I rated it at two stars.