I listened to this book, which is always difficult for me with nonfiction books. I always lost parts of the detail when my attention wanders. This book made it slightly worse because it is too long. It is not so bad as to be one of those books where you wish you had just read the Wikipedia entry, Parry provides too good a perspective for that, but the audiobook could have been a couple of hours shorter.

Parry was a reporter in Japan, covering the disappearance of a British woman. Because he was a reporter, Parry had a relationship with the family that he could draw on when writing this book. Parry also discusses Japanese history and the culture of Japan to give a perspective on why this disappearance happened. I learned a lot about Japan and Japanese culture and pastimes, all in the context of a true crime story.