Book review: People who Eat Darkness

by philg

I recently finished People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo–and the Evil That Swallowed Her Up by Richard Parry, a journalist. I’m not generally a crime/mystery reader (found this among Amazon’s “best non-fiction books of the year”), but this true story about an English girl who disappeared in Tokyo in 2000 should grip anyone who is a parent and interested in Japanese society. I don’t want to say more for fear of spoiling the suspense. Lucie Blackman’s disappearance was a media sensation at the time, especially in Britain, but I don’t remember hearing about it previously.

Practical advice for young women: Don’t agree to be alone with a man unless you have met his friends (and verified that he has real and close friends). We are wired from the old days of small populations and limited travel. Our brains are set up for a world in which it is practical to know each new acquaintance by family background going back several generations. A friendless person who still has a sex drive is a very dangerous creature in our modern world of 7 billion souls and overnight travel across oceans.

[There are hardly any photos in the book and no maps so it works well on an electronic reader such as the Kindle.]

2 thoughts on “Book review: People who Eat Darkness”

  1. you’ve intrigued me as I rarely read crime/mystery reader either, but enjoyed http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Chandra-Washington-Murder-Mystery/dp/1439138672/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354159955&sr=1-2&keywords=chandra+levy

    as story caught my attention, especially when Chandra’s body was found in Rock Creek Park by a man walking his dog. Friend immediately emailed me — horrific to think, but every time we had taken our pre-schoolers down to a particular area to cast stones in the creek, it turned out we were no more than 100 yards from where body had just been found. Chandra’s attacker had attempted to rape 2 other young women (one was a 185 lb. former college athlete who fought him off; the other was simply lucky that a passerby interrupted the attack) before he assaulted & murdered Chandra.

  2. You got me with this: “We are wired from the old days of small populations and limited travel. Our brains are set up for a world in which it is practical to know each new acquaintance by family background going back several generations.” Very true, I’ve ordered the ebook from the SF library.

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