Hideo Yokoyama Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Hideo Yokoyama is a Japanese bestselling author of thriller/mystery books. He worked as an investigative journalist with a regional newspaper in Tokyo for over a decade before quitting to start a career as a fiction writer. His debut in the publishing world was in 1998 when Season of Shadows, a collection of police stories, won the Matsumoto Seicho Prize. The collection was also shortlisted for the Naoki Prize. In 2000 Hideo’s story Doki (Motive) won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Short Stories.

Additionally, his 2002 book Half Solved was Konomys number one and saw the author listed as one of Japan’s bestselling authors. Other of Hideo’s prominent literary works include Climber’s High (2003), which centers on the crash of JAL Flight 123, which he covered as a journalist in 1985. Others include Seismic Intensity Zero (2005), Initial Investigation (2004), and Seas with No Exit (2004). Hideo’s books have won four Japanese awards, and others have been nominated. In 2016, Six Four was shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger.
Six Four is one of the books in Prefecture D, a collection of four novels about internal affairs investigations, with no serial killers, locked room murders, no torture, no sexually represented villains, and no female fatales. Rather than all these facades, the book has one-sided phone calls, snarled relationship between the cops and the media, bureaucratic infighting, and an original plot. Six Four is Hideo Yokoyama’s sixth novel but the first of his book to get an English translation which sold more than a million copies in six days in his home country.

The first opening pages introduce us to two gone girls. In 1989, Shoko, a 17-year-old girl, was kidnapped, and after a compromised ransom handover, the girl was murdered. The crime remained unsolved for over a decade. Then Yoshinobu Mikami, an investigator who worked on Shoko’s case investigative instincts are aroused by the recent and similar disappearance of his daughter, Ayumi. Through special arrangements with his superiors, Mikami is often summoned to have a look at any young woman found murdered to rule out his bereavement.

Brought closer to Shoko’s unsolved case through his own experience, Mikami has been distanced from the case to what seems to have been a demotion from the investigation team to the job of press director. Mikami is tasked with planning the police commissioner’s visit to Shoko’s family on the most recent anniversary of the crime. As is common with fictitious cases, Mikami explores the file and discovers an unrecognized abnormality. This setting successfully fulfills the fundamental need of a mystery concept, keeping the reader anxious for the resolution. Complicities, such as the precise role of the “Koda memo” and the nature of the silent calls received by Mikami and his wife in relation to Shoko, Ayumi, or, by all generalized precedent, probably both, heighten the audience’s curiosity.

How people see us is quite different than how we see ourselves. None of the people around us have more information about us than we do about ourselves. What we know about ourselves can be a reflection that can negatively or positively influence the face we wear in our world.
This has even more serious consequences for Yoshinobu Mikami. Although he is not particularly attractive, he is married to Minako, who is rather lovely. Ayumi, their daughter, resembles him and is negatively affected by her resemblance to her mother. The psychological toll on the family is greater than they even realize. Ayumi has dysmorphophobia (Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a severe form of body dysmorphic disorder. And then she disappears.

Mikami is adjusting to his new position as the head of communications with the press. He wishes he could find a profession that would allow him to remain easier to find for his wife and children, yet he is missing being a detective. Due to his innate self-consciousness about his looks, the anguish of witnessing his daughter’s dislike of her rendition of his face is substantially worse.

Police are still looking into the kidnapping and murder of a 7-year-old child 14 years ago; the case is known as “Six Four,” named after the year it was committed. The girl was slain even though the ransom was paid. Mikami must visit Amamiya, the father of the deceased girl, to determine if he will allow a high-ranking official to come and see him during his stay in the area. An entirely political occasion that demonstrates the horrible tragedy’s effect on Japanese society.

During her conversation with Amamiya, Mikami receives brief evidence of what went awry in the investigation’s early stages. He wants to focus only on the Six Four case, but he is troubled by a prospective boycott by the media, which is proven to be a diversion and might result in his dismissal. He is beginning to assemble facts as he pulls the ties that link him to other investigators, which further fuels his desire to find the truth. What went wrong, exactly? He soon becomes embroiled in the political context of a high-profile case, and the detectives are told not to speak to him. Futawatari, an old adversary, keeps popping up half a step in front of him anywhere. Mikami’s wife receives calls in the meantime, but there is no sound besides breathing. Could it be Ayumi? Or was it connected to his prohibited investigation?

This novel was a tremendous hit in Japan and all over Europe. In his native Japan, Hideo Yokoyama has a high level of respect. The book is undoubtedly longer than an average mystery. You won’t find the fast-paced Yakuza knife clashes and fleeing gun battles with ruthless kidnappers in this book because it is a slow burn. Through Mikami’s perseverance, we gain an in-depth understanding of Japanese police operations and the number of layers established to shield the ones at the top from the unsavory aspects of the job at the bottom. That conflict is surrounded by Mikami’s sentiments about his career, young daughter, spouse, and personal place within the universe.