Kaoru Takamura

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'One of the great masterpieces of Japanese crime fiction' David Peace, author of Tokyo Year Zero

One of Japan's great modern writers, this second half of Lady Joker brings Kaoru Takamura's breathtaking masterpiece to a gripping conclusion.

Five men who meet at a Tokyo racetrack every week carry out a heist. They have kidnapped the CEO of Japan's largest beer company to extract blood money from the company's corrupt financiers.

Known as Lady Joker, the men make their first attack on the beer company when their demands are not met. As the attacks escalate, the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are exposed, the stakes rise, and bring into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes and the villains. Some will lose everything, even their lives.

Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case that terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines this watershed episode in modern Japanese history.

'A novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts' Yoko Ogawa, author of The Memory Police