William Leith10 April 2012
People Who Eat Darkness
by Richard Lloyd Parry
(Vintage, £7.99)
There are true crime books, and then there are great true crime books. This one's great - right up there with Joe McGinnis, and even possibly Truman Capote.
What a stunning read! It's about the disappearance, in 2000, of Lucie Blackman, an English girl working as a hostess in a bar in Tokyo.
Parry takes us back into Lucie's life - the broken middle-class home in Sevenoaks, the boyfriends, the debt, the decision to move to Japan to become a bar hostess, the meeting with a client called Joji Obara.
Then he takes us into the sinister, appalling life of Obara, a serial rapist and killer. But it's not just about this one crime. It's also about Japan. Just brilliant.
