People Who Eat Darkness

Title: People Who Eat Darkness
Author: Richard Lloyd Parry
Pub Date: 2011
Genre: Nonfiction; True Crime
Nutshell: The mystery of an English woman who suddenly went missing in Japan

The story of Lucie Blackman, who disappeared in Tokyo while working as a club hostess in 2000, is a sad an incomplete one. Her disappearance ripped her family apart, and became a minor cause celebre for a time within Britain and other countries. The European stereotype of Japanese "strangeness" increased because of it. 

Richard Lloyd Parry tells a riveting story with access to all sides--Lucie's father and mother, who split in an acrimonious divorce years before her disappearance and whose mutual hatred of each other caused a great deal of pain and complication for their children; Lucie's siblings, a brother and sister who loved but at times barely knew their older sister; Lucie's friends, some of whom knew her better than others and watched her become someone difference the closer she got to leaving for a foreign country and the deeper she fell into debt; and the man accused of causing her disappearance in Tokyo. Stories sometimes mesh and sometimes are hopelessly far apart, and Lloyd Parry does a good job of keeping all the balls in the air and keeping the reader interested.

This is essentially a true crime story with a lot of history and sociology thrown in as necessary, due to most Western readers' general unfamiliarity with Japanese life and customs. Many Americans and Europeans may not have any idea about the sort of hostess bar where Lucie Blackman worked, or the feelings the Japanese have about Westerners in general and Western women in particular. The section about Lucie's accused kidnapper also deals with the plight of the ethnic Koreans of Japan and the racism they still face even in the modern era. It is much to take in, but Lloyd Parry weaves everything in without making anything boring or too much like a lecture. Lucie is at the center of everything and we are never too far away from her and the search for where she has gone.

I'd recommend this book for any fans of true crime or Japanese culture. The Japanese police don't get a shining grade in this story, but one could easily argue they probably shouldn't. Lloyd Parry is English and may not have all the cultural facts or understanding as an outsider, but I think he did a pretty good job reporting overall and I don't believe he set out to insult anyone.