Going beyond explication of investigation, Miyuki Miyabe’s All She Was Worth also mixed in a good amount of characterization with its crime fiction plotting. It’s a little slow in the first half, but the pacing picks up quite a bit in the second. I didn’t care much for the anti-consumerism anti-credit diatribes, even though I agree with them philosophically. I think they could have been shortened resulting in a better paced book. Miyabe’s multi-layered characters were the strong point of the book.
All She Was Worth has a different vibe than most of the crime fiction I’ve read, but not really all that different. The investigator is unfailingly polite, though he employs a few psychological tricks that give him more control than the politeness gives him haplessness. The book’s setting is Japan, primarily Tokyo. The differences in the laws and cultural norms between Japan as told by Miyabe and the U.S. really are pretty minimal. A woman is treated as part of a man’s family and working women have expectations placed on them by their employers that we don’t see here. In the context of this novel, the differences are so few that any U.S. mystery reader will feel at home.
Shunsuke Honma is the detective, injured and on leave. A relative, Jun Kurisaka, comes to him seeking Honma’s help to find his fiance who has skipped town. Shoko Sekine disappeared after the relative decided to get her a credit card. A five year old bankruptcy prevented the application from succeeding. It’s initially baffling as to why she ran, but it quickly becomes apparent that Shoko Sekine is not the original person named Shoko Sekine. The fiance has assumed someone else’s name. We have a mystery, not just where she is, but who she really is and why and how she became Shoko Sekine.
The book is constructed to comment on the debt and consumer culture. In fact, one whole chapter is a minor character’s explication of Japan’s debt and credit industry, how regular people get themselves into trouble, and how bankruptcy works. I think the early part of the book overfocused on this and was slow as a result. I’ve seen several summaries that make the motive for the crime one of consumer culture. It didn’t appear that way to me. It was a complicating factor to the investigation, as the real Shoko Sekine got herself into debt and the revelation of bankruptcy is what caused the impostor to run, and there are some cascading effects of that knowledge. Obviously I see the motive as something else, but this is a spoiler free review so I won’t say what. I’m glad consumerism wasn’t the motive, however. It made the criminal much less crass and much more real in my mind.
I can’t think of one character I didn’t like in context of the story. Some are people I would hate in real life, of course. The investigating team, initially just Honma, slowly grows as more people get sucked in: a fellow detective, a high school mate with an unrequited crush, and even Honma’s pre-teen son. I had problems tracking who was who in the ever increasingly sizable cast, but only because of their number. Even those who the reader sees only in glimpses are characters with multiple facets. One scene just after the man with the unrequited crush asserts he will join the investigation stands out. Honma has a conversation with the man’s wife, who is hurt over her husband’s still strong feelings for Shoko long after Shoko has passed out of his life. Nevertheless, she assents to him going on his quest. She barely makes an appearance and yet her character is far more than one dimensional. Even the real Shoko Sekine leaves her personality behind her, rather than just a trail of evidence of her life. The reader gets to know what she was like and what her family was like, all through revelations from people she knew.
One thing was very different than every other crime fiction novel I’ve read. Most have a short wrap-up at the end. A kind of unwinding that says what happened or didn’t happen to the criminal, possibly something that transitions the investigator on to the next book. Miyabe’s ending occurs right at the climax. Scooby-doo pulls the mask off the monster to reveal the caretaker, and we go to credits. (Obviously, this is not Scooby-doo, and no mask gets pulled off. Again, no spoilers so I pulled my example from something else.) I’m sure it’s not that unusual, but it’s very different from the stuff I’ve read and refreshing. I might get annoyed if all my mysteries ended that way.
I liked the book enough that I’ll read more from Miyabe.
Other blogged reviews:
Title: All She Was Worth (火車)
Author: Miyuke Miyabe (宮部みゆき)
Translator: Alfred Birnbaum
Cover creator: Glen Allison (photographer) / Mark R. Robinson (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Mariner Books / Houghton Mifflin
Format: Paperback
Length: 296 p.
Publication date: 1999 (originally 1992)
ISBN-10: 0-395-96658-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-395-96658-7
Subject: Japan — Fiction
Sometimes it’s nice when an author does something unexpected like that. Of course you don’t want to depart from convention too often or else it starts feeling like it’s just not well written!