{"product_id":"lady-joker-volume-1-isbn-9781641293945","title":"Lady Joker, Volume 1","description":"\u003cb\u003eOne of Japan’s great modern masters, Kaoru Takamura, makes her English-language debut with this two-volume publication of her magnum opus.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTokyo, 1995. Five men meet at the racetrack every Sunday to bet on horses. They have little in common except a deep disaffection with their lives, but together they represent the social struggles and griefs of post-War Japan: a poorly socialized genius stuck working as a welder; a demoted detective with a chip on his shoulder; a Zainichi Korean banker sick of being ostracized for his race; a struggling single dad of a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The fifth man bringing them all together is an elderly drugstore owner grieving his grandson, who has died suspiciously after the revelation of a family connection with the segregated buraku community, historically subjected to severe discrimination. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntent on revenge against a society that values corporate behemoths more than human life, the five conspirators decide to carry out a heist: kidnap the CEO of Japan’s largest beer conglomerate and extract blood money from the company’s corrupt financiers. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInspired by the unsolved true-crime kidnapping case perpetrated by “the Monster with 21 Faces,” \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e has become a cultural touchstone since its 1997 publication, acknowledged as the magnum opus by one of Japan’s literary masters, twice adapted for film and TV and often taught in high school and college classrooms.\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTIME Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e's 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn Amazon Best of the Month Pick for April 2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of 2021\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCrimeReads Best Books of the Year (So Far)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cu\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cu\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/u\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hinging on a kidnapping plot, Takamura’s prismatic heist novel offers a broad indictment of capitalist society.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e] is a work you get immersed in, like a sprawling 19th century novel or a TV series like \"The Wire.\" It reveals its world in rich polyphonic detail. Inspired by a real-life case, it takes us inside half a dozen main characters, follows scads of secondary ones and enters bars and boardrooms we could never otherwise go . . . Yet for all its digressions, \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e casts a page-turning spell.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—John Powers, NPR's \u003ci\u003eFresh Air\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like Ellroy’s \u003ci\u003eAmerican Tabloid\u003c\/i\u003e and Carr’s \u003ci\u003eThe Alienist\u003c\/i\u003e, the book uses crime as a prism to examine dynamic periods of social history . . . Takamura’s blistering indictment of capitalism, corporate corruption and the alienation felt by characters on both sides of the law from institutions they once believed would protect them resonates surprisingly with American culture.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Paula Woods, \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Hallelujah!  Inspired by the real-life, still unsolved Glico-Morinaga kidnapping and  extortion case that led to the nationwide hunt for 'The Monster with  Twenty-one Faces,' Kaoru Takamura’s \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e is at last available in translation; epic  in its scale and vision, yet gripping from first to last, this is one  of the great masterpieces of Japanese crime fiction and one of the  must-read books of this or any year.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—David Peace, author of \u003ci\u003eTokyo Year Zero\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e “Let's make one thing absolutely clear, Kaoru Takamura's Lady Joker is intimidating. First off, it's 576 pages big—that's James Michener big, that's Gone with the Wind big, that's James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet big . . . So, I'm glad to report that the feeling of intimidation quickly wanes as Takamura proceeds to weave her epic, post-World War II tale of crime and social injustice . . . One which definitely rewards the effort.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Hank Wagner, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eMystery Scene\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“For those wanting a page-turning thriller in the vein of Hideo Yokoyama’s Six Four, there’s plenty of police procedure, smoky backrooms, tense press conferences and angry superiors slamming things on desks. But there is also social commentary, history and a comprehensive account of how Japan’s corporate, political and criminal worlds coexist in an uneasy, toxic relationship. Like all great fiction, Lady Joker informs and entertains.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Japan Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It is well worth the wait for anyone interested in a panoramic portrait of modern Japanese society, including its dark corners, as well as fans of intelligent mysteries.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—The Nikkei\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mysterious and multilayered, [\u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e] gives readers extortion and kidnapping as it critiques the dark corners of Japanese society and the human experience.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eMs. Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Yoko Ogawa, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Memory Police\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“A swarm of characters, an unorthodox structure, and slow-moving, ultimately irresistible suspense distinguish \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e . . . Like some novels by James Ellroy and Marlon James, \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e is wildly ambitious in scope.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“An immense and extraordinary feat of writing and translation that has been long-awaited in English, \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e is at once a thriller and a sweeping cultural history of Japan, a love story and a work of poignant social commentary.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e—BookRiot\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Lady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e reads like Don DeLillo’s \u003ci\u003eUnderworld\u003c\/i\u003e rewritten by James Ellroy, or perhaps \u003ci\u003eLA Confidential\u003c\/i\u003e rewritten by Don DeLillo? What I’m trying to say here is, \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e is EPIC.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—CrimeReads\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Impressive, very large-scale crime(-and-more) novel of post-war Japan . . . \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e is anything but your usual mystery.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The Complete Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Through the working class, and executives, the police force and media, author Kaoru Takamura brings to her readers a Japan which is complicated and often corrupt. The disenfranchised working class who commit a crime seem no better (or worse) than the corporate executives who commit crimes in their own, more subtle, ways.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Dolce Belleza\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Excellent . . . Takamura shows why she’s one of Japan’s most prominent mystery novelists.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, Starred Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Takamura’s challenging, genre-confounding epic offers a sweeping view of contemporary Japan in all its complexity.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Centered around an extortion case involving a beer company, \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e would  ordinarily be categorized in the crime or mystery novel genre, yet the  book deserves to be called an exemplary literary work that depicts  contemporary society . . . A magnum opus . . . It requires extraordinary skill to fully depict the ambivalence of Japanese society, in all its detail. Reading \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e together with James Ellroy’s \u003ci\u003eAmerican Tabloid\u003c\/i\u003e and  the drama behind the Kennedy assassination serves as an intriguing  comparison. Viewing a society through the lens of a crime is like  examining a disease or a corpse to get at the person: it exposes the  foundations of human existence.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Yomiuri Newspaper\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Using the relationship between individuals and institutions as its axis, \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e attempts  to depict the contemporary era in its entirety. The effort is so  reckless as to be almost quixotic, but with her formidable literary  talents, Kaoru Takamura accomplishes her goal to a handsome degree . . . \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e is  a multilayered novel that allows for many interpretations, yet its  structure places it firmly within the framework of a social-awareness  mystery.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Shosetsu Subaru Literary Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“\u003c\/i\u003eA superb suspense novel with depth.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Shukan Bunshun \u003c\/i\u003e(\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Literary Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e) \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Takamura’s eye for detail and storytelling prowess are astonishing . . . It’s possible to read \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e in  various ways—as a mystery novel, a police procedural, or a cautionary  tale of corporate risk management. I read it as an exploration of the  original sin of human existence . . . The  depth of empathy readers will feel for this book’s characters directly  corresponds with the author’s insight on the intersections of human  existence.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Ushio Magazine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“An ambitious work of carefully plotted crime fiction with a deep social conscience.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e—Crime Fiction Lover\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eKaoru Takamura\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Osaka in 1953 and is the author of thirteen novels. Her debut,\u003ci\u003e Grab the Money and Run\u003c\/i\u003e, won the 1990 Japan Mystery and Suspense Grand Prize, and since then her work has been recognized with many of Japan’s most prestigious awards for literary fiction as well as for crime fiction: the Naoki Prize, the Noma Literary Award, the Yomiuri Prize, the Shinran Prize, the Jiro Osaragi Prize, the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, and the Japan Adventure Fiction Association Prize. \u003ci\u003eLady Joker\u003c\/i\u003e, her first novel to be translated into English, received the Mainichi Arts Award and has been adapted into both a film and a television series.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAllison Markin Powell\u003c\/b\u003e is  a literary translator, editor, and publishing consultant. She has been  awarded grants from English PEN and the NEA, and the 2020 PEN America  Translation Prize for \u003ci\u003eThe Ten Loves of Nishino\u003c\/i\u003e by Hiromi  Kawakami. Her other translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Kanako  Nishi, and Fuminori Nakamura. She was the guest editor for the first  Japan issue of \u003ci\u003eWords Without Borders\u003c\/i\u003e, and she maintains the database Japanese Literature in English.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cb\u003eMarie Iida\u003c\/b\u003e has served as an interpreter for the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author Marie Kondo’s Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series, \u003ci\u003eTidying Up with Marie Kondo.\u003c\/i\u003e Her nonfiction translations have appeared in \u003ci\u003eNang\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eMoMA Post\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEureka \u003c\/i\u003eand  over half a dozen monographs on contemporary Japanese artists and  architects, including Yayoi Kusama, Toyo Ito, and Kenya Hara for Rizzoli  New York. Marie currently writes a monthly column for \u003ci\u003eGentosha Plus\u003c\/i\u003e about communicating in English as a native Japanese speaker.It was raining for the first time in almost three weeks at Tokyo Racecourse in Fuchu. The rain fell harder in the afternoon, and by the time the ninth race began, the cluster of umbrellas gathered near the finish line began to scatter one by one. On a day like this, the hundred thousand or so people huddled together in the grandstand got so thoroughly drenched that water could practically be wrung out from the crowd.\u003cbr\u003e      Rising above the low hum that filled the second level of the grandstands, a heavy groaning sounded from time to time, like air seeping out of a broken exhaust pipe. A girl sitting on a bench, contorting her\u003cbr\u003e upper body and twisting her neck about while shaking from side to side, was gasping out her breath, forming an indistinct word composed only of vowels: “Aaaa, ooo.” It was the girl’s way of saying “Start.”\u003cbr\u003e      Sitting on the girl’s right side, the man accompanying her looked up. He blinked his heavy eyelids and muttered, “Be quiet,” but the girl, contorting her mouth and shaking her head up and down vigorously to express the joy of having had her feelings understood, let out a hoarse scream.\u003cbr\u003e      A single strand of rope was wrapped around the girl’s waist, and it was tied to the bench. The girl was well over twelve years old, but because her neck and upper body were unstable, she had to be tied to the bench to prevent her from falling over. That day the girl also gave off a sour smell of blood, and every time she moved the stench permeated the air around her. The man accompanying the girl sat next to her, seemingly unaware of this, as she continued to wobble her neck and groan, until he lowered his head to doze off again.\u003cbr\u003e      Say, where did I leave my umbrella? Seizo Monoi suddenly wondered and, taking his eyes off his newspaper, looked at his feet beneath the bench. Without adjusting his reading glasses, he scanned the blurry concrete floor before picking up his black umbrella, which was being trampled by the canvas shoes of the girl sitting next to him. A wet and withered piece of newspaper was stuck to the cloth of the umbrella. His eyes caught the words “Superior Quality, 100 Years in the Making. Hinode Lager” in an ad printed on the page before he shook it off.\u003cbr\u003e      Beside him, the girl had begun stamping her feet again and wringing from her throat her version of the word, “Start, start!” It was the beginning of the ninth race, a six-furlong race for three-year-old colts and fillies. As Monoi raised his head to witness the start of the race he had not bet on, he wondered if the smell of blood wafting from the girl was only in his imagination. He unconsciously turned his neck so that the right half of his face was positioned toward the racecourse. He had suffered an accident as a child that had cost him most of the vision in his left eye when he came of age and now, in his late sixties, that side had gone completely dark.\u003cbr\u003e      The overcast weather darkened the racecourse, and the horses that took off from across the infield looked as if they were swimming into a stormy sea with jockeys in tow. In November the turf track still bore shades of green, but perhaps from the color of the rain or the sky, the entire course was dulled to an inky darkness, and the dirt track to the inside of the one on which the horses now ran looked like a black sash, frothy with mud. A live feed of the ground’s surface was displayed on the jumbotron located directly across from the grandstand.\u003cbr\u003e      Monoi was looking at the dirt track because the next race—the tenth, and the one he planned to bet on— would be run on this course. As was always the case, imagining the weight of the horses’ hooves, he was consumed by an inexplicable restlessness that made his insides leap. After all this time, the sight of the horses—kicking off dirt as their rumps were whipped and veins stood out on their throats—still filled Monoi with wonder. The horses, he thought to himself, couldn’t contain the latent excitement that rose within them as they felt the menace and the relentlessness of the earth and the weight of every step of their four legs. They must have been born to feel this way—no animal on earth would run just for being struck by the crop.\u003cbr\u003e      The 1,400-meter race on the turf track went on while Monoi was pondering this, and just as the pacemaker and the stalker neared the finish line side by side like conjoined dumplings, the favorite, Inter Mirage, came storming from the rear, causing the crowd in the stands to roar for a moment. However, as the frontrunner shot to the finish line, the clamor dissipated into a sigh that was soon engulfed by the sound of the rain thundering down on the roof.\u003cbr\u003e      Monoi folded the newspaper with the tenth race’s details in his lap and, looking up at the electronic scoreboard, which was visible from the second-floor seats, checked the ninth race’s placings out of amusement. Ever Smile, a horse he had seen win in his debut on the 14th last month, had placed fourth today, two and a half lengths back. Thinking that was probably as good as he could do, Monoi murmured to himself that Ever Smile was still a three-year-old colt after all. The horse wasn’t a particular favorite of his, but the day after the race last month was when his grandchild—his daughter’s son, who was about to turn twenty-two—had been killed in an accident on the Shuto Expressway, so it surfaced in his mind briefly. That same moment,\u003cbr\u003e large drops of rain started to pelt down on the racecourse again, distracting Monoi. An ever-widening pool of water had formed on the surface of the dirt track, visible beyond. The next race would be like running through a muddy rice paddy.\u003cbr\u003e      It would be impossible to decide on a horse for the tenth race without seeing the ones entered, up close in the paddock. The horses gathering now were used to a dirt track, but not a single one of them had a record of performing well in sloppy conditions like today. None of the horses had a marked difference in weight either. If it were to be a race among horses of similar standing and appearance, all the more reason why it would not do to pick one without seeing the nature of the horse just before the start. He reached this conclusion easily, but the truth of the matter was that he couldn’t be sure. Only the horses knew the answer.\u003cbr\u003e      As soon as Monoi decided to head over to the paddock, however, the stats of the horses competing in the eleventh race flashed across the projection screen in front of the finish line. He had yet to decide if he would bet on the eleventh race, but just in case, he took a minute or so to jot down the weights of the horses in the margin of his newspaper. Then, as he swiveled to his right on the bench, the wobbling head of the girl he had forgotten about there for the moment suddenly swung around and leaned toward him. The girl, slightly squinting up at Monoi, grunted, “Eennhh, eennhh.” Perhaps the girl had said, “Wind.” When Monoi turned back to the racecourse, the rain draping over the grass was blowing at a diagonal. It looked as if someone had pulled an ink-black curtain across the ground.\u003cbr\u003e      “Oh, you’re right. The wind.”\u003cbr\u003e      Monoi gave a half-hearted response to the girl’s words and patted the small head he had grown accustomed to over the last six years. The smell of blood rose again. Monoi thought subconsciously, the scent of a mare’s urine.\u003cbr\u003e      Propelled by a slight, rootless irritation, Monoi called over the girl’s head to the man accompanying her. “Nunokawa-san. Are you going to bet next?”\u003cbr\u003e      The man he had called out to raised his head and turned his eyes toward the newspaper he had hardly glanced at even though he had been there since morning. He shook his head and responded, “Sixteen hundred in bad conditions? I don’t need that.” \u003cbr\u003e      “Inter Erimo will race. His first since he’s been upped in class.”\u003cbr\u003e      “Erimo’s too stiff. You like him, don’t you, Monoi? He’s not for me though.”\u003cbr\u003e      Nunokawa gave Monoi his trademark faint smile and held firm. He was a man who only bet on the main race and safely chose the first or second favorite, so he never won big but never lost a lot of money either. He demonstrated no partiality toward a particular horse, and anyway, he barely even looked at the newspaper racing columns. He came with his daughter to the same second-floor seats in front of the finish line every Sunday not so much for his own enjoyment but because his daughter liked horses. Once he had installed his charge in her seat, he usually nodded off or stared blankly at nothing.\u003cbr\u003e      Nunokawa was still a young man. He could not have been much past thirty, a fact that was obvious from the incomparable luster of his skin. When Monoi first met him six years ago, the sight of this tall figure—easily over six feet—slouching on the bench had instantly reminded Monoi, despite his rather paltry knowledge of art, of a Rodin sculpture. When Nunokawa told him he had served as a member of the First Airborne Brigade of the Self-Defense Force stationed at Narashino, Monoi thought it was no wonder, with such an impressive stature. Nunokawa had a melancholy look in his eyes, but Monoi made the clichéd assumption that being the parent of a disabled child must be quite difficult at such a young age. Nevertheless, Nunokawa’s crude and awkward manner of speaking and the honesty in his expression, which clouded over with frustration now and then, made Monoi feel a sense of affinity with and fondness for him. As far as affinity went, however, aside from the fact that Monoi himself had a disability in one eye and was also taciturn and awkward, they had nothing specific in common. Because having a disabled daughter required a good deal of money, for several years now Nunokawa had worked as a truck driver for a large transportation company. He spent six days a week going back and forth relentlessly between Tokyo and Kansai in a ten-ton truck.\u003cbr\u003e      “Erimo will run on the dirt track.” Monoi said this almost to himself as he got up from the bench to walk to the paddock. Once he walked down the stairs and reached the lines in front of the parimutuel betting windows on the first floor, he realized that he had once again forgotten the umbrella he had just retrieved, but it wasn’t enough to detain him. His forgetfulness progressed every day like a painless gum disease; until the day his teeth fell out, there was time enough to rot.\u003cbr\u003e      Just in front of the paddock, there was a man seated by a pillar in an alleyway where drifting trash had collected. The sight of him caused Monoi to pause in his tracks. The man, in his mid-twenties, sat cross-legged with his young body bent awkwardly forward, his face buried in the newspaper that he held open with both hands. Monoi always encountered him in this same exact spot, and every time the man was intently studying his newspaper in a similar posture.\u003cbr\u003e      “Yo-chan.”\u003cbr\u003e      Monoi called to the young man, who acknowledged him by briefly raising his eyes from the newspaper before dropping his gaze again.\u003cbr\u003e      The man’s name was Yokichi Matsudo, but everyone called him Yo-chan. He worked at the local factory in the neighborhood where Monoi lived. On the day of the funeral for Monoi’s grandson—who knows how he’d heard about it—Yo-chan brought over a condolence offering of three thousand yen tucked into a business envelope. When it came to horseracing, he was a Sunday regular like Nunokawa, but Yo-chan always bought up three or four of the Saturday horseracing papers as well as the evening newspaper, and would spend the whole night grappling with the racing columns in his cramped apartment. Right up to the start of the races, he would still be staring intently at the newspaper, which he held ten centimeters before his face, trying to predict their outcomes, until he could no longer tell what was what and a blue vein stood out on his temple. It was always the same routine with Yo-chan.\u003cbr\u003e      Monoi spoke gingerly to the lowered head. “You betting next?”\u003cbr\u003e      “Only on the eleventh race today. Got no money.”\u003cbr\u003e      “Which one?”\u003cbr\u003e      “Diana—maybe. I’m not sure.” Yo-chan nervously folded his newspapers with his dirty black fingernails and, tucking a worn-down red pencil into the pages, said to himself, “It’s gotta be Diana,” and further mumbled, “Will three come first, or will it be four . . .”\u003cbr\u003e      Suddenly, a man who had been sitting shoulder to shoulder with Yo-chan got up and began to walk away. He was around thirty or so, with an unremarkable appearance from the neck up, but then Monoi couldn’t help noticing the flashy vertical striped jacket he wore over a purple shirt, and his white loafers with the heels crushed down. Yo-chan’s gaze was also drawn to the man and he responded, “An acquaintance.”\u003cbr\u003e      “Who is he?” Monoi asked.\u003cbr\u003e      “A guy from the credit union who comes to the factory.”\u003cbr\u003e      “Huh.”\u003cbr\u003e      “He’s a Zainichi Korean. Always pissed off on Sundays.”\u003cbr\u003e      As Yo-chan said this he flashed his teeth a little, his shoulders shaking as he laughed without a sound.\u003cbr\u003e      In that moment Monoi failed to make out Yo-chan’s spurt of words, but he assumed it was because of his bad hearing and didn’t bother asking him to repeat what he had said. After all, Yo-chan was as young as Monoi’s grandson, and everything about him—from his outlook on things to the way he used his chopsticks—only caused Monoi to feel ill at ease. It had been the same with his grandson who died on the 15th. In any case, the way Monoi saw it, the man walking away seemed to belong to that particular vein of shady underworld connections, though he had no clue as to why he had gotten such an impression.\u003cbr\u003e      “Diana might be a win,” Monoi said, bringing the conversation back around.\u003cbr\u003e     “Middle odds at best. Not a dark horse,” Yo-chan corrected him soberly, though his face was already buried again in his newspaper.\u003cbr\u003e      Monoi spoke to his profile. “Come by my house tomorrow. We’ll go out for sushi.” With that, he walked away.","brand":"Soho Crime","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303168889061,"sku":"NP9781641293945","price":18.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781641293945.jpg?v=1767731082","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/lady-joker-volume-1-isbn-9781641293945","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}