People Who Eat Darkness

People Who Eat Darkness (2011) by Richard Lloyd Parry. In 2000, Lucie Blackman, a young British woman who was working as a hostess at a Tokyo night club, disappeared. This book is the true-crime retelling of the agony Lucie's family went through, the long delays of the Japanese justice system, and the eventual discovery of Lucie's fate. The striking thing about this book is that it grows progressively more absorbing the more you read. At first it seems to shilly-shally, as Lucie's fate is unknown and all we have are stories about her family's desperate efforts to appeal to Japanese public opinion to find a clue as to what happened to her. But once a suspect is found and her murder goes to trial, the book becomes riveting, if a bit depressing. The interplay of personalities of Lucie's family is almost as interesting as the crime itself. A gruesome, fascinating book. Grade: B+