Lady Joker, Volume 2

It was before 12:02 a.m. on May 8th, shortly after Kubo had returned from his check-in for the evening session, when he got a heads-up from the First Mobile Investigation Unit. His source, the assistant police inspector, said in a quick whisper, Lady Joker s on the move. They ve demanded six hundred million in cash.
    Lady what? Kubo grabbed a notepad that was nearby.
     The assistant inspector repeated the English words. Lady as in first lady. Then joker as in the trump card. Lady Joker. That s what the crime group is calling themselves.
     Kubo passed around the notepad on which he had scribbled Hinode suspects = Lady Joker to his colleagues in the press nook, then resumed firing questions into the receiver. Was the demand made with a letter or over the phone?
     A sealed letter. In a business envelope. It was thrown inside the front gate of their Kyoto factory this morning.
     What time was it discovered?
     Five-thirty a.m. A guard found it.
     What did it say? Please!
     They want six hundred million in used bills. The handoff will take place at eleven p.m. on the ninth. A white station wagon will be used to transport the money. Only one person in the car. Location will be somewhere in Koto district. That s all I can tell you.
     Where will the car leave from? The main office? A branch office? A factory? We can tail it.
     That s the best I can do, sorry. His source cut off there, but Kubo could guess that the white station wagon with the payload would leave from either Hinode s main office, its Tokyo branch, Yokohama branch, or the Kanagawa factory, and they d know which if they staked out all the possible locations. So long as it took place within the city limits of Tokyo s twenty-three districts, the driver would only

Kaoru Takamura was born in Osaka in 1953 and is the author of thirteen novels. Her debut, Grab the Money and Run, 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. Lady Joker, 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.

Allison Markin Powell 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 The Ten Loves of Nishino 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 Words Without Borders, and she maintains the database Japanese Literature in English.

Marie Iida has served as an interpreter for the New York Times bestselling author Marie Kondo s Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Her nonfiction translations have appeared in Nang, MoMA Post, Eureka and 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 Gentosha Plus about communicating in English as a native Japanese speaker.

Praise for Lady Joker, Volume 2

TIME Magazine's 100 Best Mystery and Thriller Books of All Time
CrimeReads Best International Crime Fiction of 2022
A CrimeReads Best Crime Novel of 2022
A Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book of 2022

A sprawling, absorbing saga . . . Examines a vast web of characters affected by a kidnapping and sabotage case in Tokyo. The action moves fluidly from news desks to corporate offices, as the police and press track a shadowy crime group calling itself Lady Joker.
The Washington Post

Like all literature, readers will take what they want from Takamura s critique of Japanese society, but at the heart of the epic novel is a gripping crime story where the actual crime itself is almost secondary to the psychological ripples it sends through the boardrooms, police stations, press offices and homes of anyone connected. This is much more of a whydunit than a whodunit and one that was well worth the wait.
The Japan Times

Takamura joins American writers James Ellroy, author of American Tabloid, and Don Winslow, author of several novels about the drug trade, to illuminate a society in which power and money matter far more than morality. All three write mysteries that also function as morality plays . . . Bravura.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Brilliantly dark.
Ms. Magazine

[A] crime saga with impressive sweep.
The Complete Review

A complex work of stunning breadth and depth by a master of the genre.
Kirkus Reviews

Admirers of intricate crime fiction, which both engages the intellect and offers insights into the hidden parts of a society, will hope for further translations of this gifted author s work.
Publishers Weekly

Praise for Lady Joker, Volume 1

Hinging on a kidnapping plot, Takamura s prismatic heist novel offers a broad indictment of capitalist society.