乙女に捧げる犯罪

(Review date: April 2011)

In the prologue we see a hired killer enter an apartment to kill a man. To the killer's surprise, the dead man was keeping a ten year old girl prisoner in his bathroom. The hitman knows that he should kill this witness, but spares her instead. In return the girl refuses to tell the police anything about the man who killed her captor.

The book proper starts years later. The girl, Yuki, is now 17 and in high school; she follows Akagawa's usual pattern of young assertive female lead characters. In a chance encounter she meets again the hitman who saved her when she was younger. This is the start of a series of steadily more alarming events that engulf Yuki and her family...

I've always found Akagawa an easy read. The language is fairly simple and the books have a lot of dialogue. They're probably best avoided if you demand deep characterisation from your reading, but since their main attraction is the plot, you still get most of the enjoyment out of them without having to look up every word you don't know.

There is a definite pattern to the Akagawa books I've read: feisty female lead, emphasis on a murder or suspense plot, occupying a sweet spot between overly cosy and blood-drenched. This would probably get dull if you read too many at a stretch, but as an occasional light read I find Akagawa hard to beat.