Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “All She Was Worth” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

All She Was Worth

Miyuki Miyabe,

Alfred Birnbaum (Translator)

3.69 · Rating details · 3,049 ratings · 410 reviews

Here is a deftly written thriller that is also a "deep and moody" (NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW) journey through the dark side of Japan's consumer-crazed society. Ordinary people plunge into insurmountable personal debt and fall prey to dangerous webs of underground creditors-so dangerous, in fact, that murder may be the only way out. A beautiful young woman vanishes, and th ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 296 pages

Published May 12th 1999 by Mariner Books (first published July 1st 1992)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about All She Was Worth, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Best Japanese Books

699 books — 2,960 voters

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

Japanese Mystery/Detective/Crime Fiction Translated Into English

133 books — 306 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.69 ·

Rating details

· 3,049 ratings · 410 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of All She Was Worth

Oct 13, 2019 Jr Bacdayan rated it liked it

A simple missing persons case morphs into identity theft and then something else entirely. It revolves around the pieced together accounts of different people to create a woman's identity. A woman on a determined quest to be rid of her demons. In this process she sheds her skin and becomes a ghost-like figure that takes on different roles and shapes to different people. This is fascinating to a degree because you never hear from her, never take on her point of view, all you know of, you know fro ...more

flag 45 likes · Like · see review

Jan 18, 2012 Shovelmonkey1 rated it it was ok

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: bookcrossing readers

All She was Worth was billed to me as a mystery and thriller and aside from reading Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto, I've not read a lot of Japanese Literature so I was intrigued to see how this would pan out. Would I be introduced to Japan's answer to Lisbeth Salander, Endeavour Morse or Magnum PI? Er no. None of the above. You will be introduced to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Shunsuke Honma who is polite, and dogged and due to an injury at work is taking his crime solving at a mor ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Jul 25, 2014 Patrick Sherriff rated it really liked it

Shelves: crime-and-such, japan

A decent police procedural this, with lots of good touches but a few flaws. On the plus side of the ledger are the sleuth, a widower with an adopted son and a gammy leg; an ingenious believable premise of stolen identity; and the completely authentic setting of the seedier side of 90s Japan trying to keep the bubble inflated on borrowed money.

But in the minus column, a couple of pages demand to be skipped where a lawyer spouts exposition on the dangers to, and legal standing of heretofore not a ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

May 31, 2014 Leonard rated it really liked it

Shelves: literature-japanese, crime-mystery

While Police Detective Shunsuke Honma is on leave after he injured his leg, a distant relative of his late wife appears and asks for help. His fiancée Shoko Sekine has disappeared after a bank rejected her application for a credit card, revealing her past bankruptcy.

Tokyo

Tokyo

Honma’s investigation reveals the woman’s descent into debt, a common problem in Japan’s consumer driven economy. But soon he finds out the fiancée might have murdered the real Shoko Sekine and taken over the woman’s identity. ...more

flag 11 likes · Like · see review

Apr 07, 2013 El rated it liked it

Shelves: 20th-centurylit-late

I was on board with this book almost entirely through, but then somewhere in the last chapter or two felt that the "answer" was a bit less interesting than I had hoped when I went into the reading. The book is still good, particularly as insight into Japanese society and culture in the 1990s.

What's especially "fun" and interesting about this book is that it's so relevant still to today. Credit card debt. Ah, who doesn't have any of that? (Besides me, but only because I don't have one.) I'm surro ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Jul 11, 2007 Yulia rated it really liked it

Shelves: criminal-intent, japandemonium

Not only well-paced but well-written, this mystery of the missing fiancee lost its momentum in only one scene, in which a Japanese businessman felt it necessary to take an hour out of his busy day to explain to another Japanese citizen the country's policy on identification cards, loans, and bankruptcy. Sure, I may not have known this information as an American and it was helpful to learm, but it was carried out so ollishly and pedantically in this translation, I wish the editors had found some ...more

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Jan 22, 2017 Ray rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

A policeman is asked by his nephew to look for his missing fiance. The policeman is on convalescent leave so takes the case on. What follows is a painstaking investigation that uncovers deception, murder, impersonation and dangerous links to the Japanese underworld in the former of loan sharks and yakusa enforcers.

A competent crime thriller which was a real page turner, as the cop follows a trail from clue to clue. Japan is a very different culture to my own and I enjoyed being immersed in a som ...more

flag 10 likes · Like · see review

Aug 31, 2020 Mobyskine rated it really liked it

Shelves: ebook, japanese-literature

What a great plot this is! Love the characters, engrossing storytelling, gripping case(s), and most of all-- love the ending!

I was quite annoyed with Jun at first-- really appreciate how the author silently drifting his character out of the narrative making it all only on Honma. I was too focusing on how Honma could managed the case going here and there all by himself with that unwell leg, thinking and guessing all together with him. It was a hard case-- missing woman, and another missing woman. ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jun 01, 2013 Sabrina rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery, books-by-women, japan, read-in-translation, crime, read-in-2015

The main takeaways of this book are the dangers of credit card debt.

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Jul 17, 2016 William Leight rated it liked it

[More like 3.5 stars really]

There are, I believe, two types of mystery, which differ based on their attitude to crime. The first type, the classical, sees crime as an aberration in a fundamentally healthy society. Criminals commit their crimes purely for personal reasons: there is no connection between crime and larger societal ills. Agatha Christie novels of the 20’s and 30’s, for instance, often have a Communist character, and suspicion naturally falls on him, because he’s a Communist, but he [More like 3.5 stars really]

There are, I believe, two types of mystery, which differ based on their attitude to crime. The first type, the classical, sees crime as an aberration in a fundamentally healthy society. Criminals commit their crimes purely for personal reasons: there is no connection between crime and larger societal ills. Agatha Christie novels of the 20’s and 30’s, for instance, often have a Communist character, and suspicion naturally falls on him, because he’s a Communist, but he is never the criminal, not because Christie was a fellow traveler but because she refuses to admit that there could be any connection between the injustices a Communist is (at least nominally) opposing and crime, which occurs only because some people are bad. In the classical type of mystery, the police may not be very good at their job, but even if they are idiotic bunglers their goal is to see justice done, and they work with the detective, often quite closely. Once the crime has been solved and the criminal arrested, society can return to its previous placid equilibrium, confident that everything is for the best. The second type, the noir, takes the opposite view, in which crime is the natural result of a fundamentally corrupt society. Wealth and power lead to crime, and also make it difficult for justice to be done. The police are usually working against the detective here, even if, as is sometimes the case, he or she is one of them: sometimes they are, of course, simply corrupt, but even if honest and well-intentioned, they are inevitably compromised by their position in a corrupt power structure, the dictates of which they are forced to follow because that is, in the end, their job. (Noirs need not be ideologically left-wing, by the way: right-wing fantasies of vigilante justice can also fall under this rubric.) Even when the crime is solved in a noir, there’s no guarantee that justice will be done: the detective can discover whodunit, but, unlike in classical mysteries, sometimes that’s not enough.

“All She Was Worth” falls on the noir side of the line, because it is very clear that the real culprit is the uncontrolled rise of consumer lending in Japan in the late ’80s and early ‘90s (when the book is set). However, rather than using the format to make this abstract problem more concrete by creating a crime which is directly tied to, say, an executive at a credit-card company, Miyabe chooses to leave a fair amount of distance between the social forces that gave rise to the crime and the criminal herself. This is an interesting gambit, one that is admittedly more realistic -- most credit-card company executives don't commit crimes -- but makes most of the usual elements of the noir unusable. For instance, there is no violence in the book, not because Japan is not a very violent country — it isn’t, of course, but our detective, Shunsuke Honma, is a policeman taking a leave of absence after being shot in the leg, so clearly violence is possible — but because the powers-that-be, not being directly implicated in any crimes, have no need to send goons to beat Honma up. In fact, Honma encounters virtually no opposition to his sleuthing, which is a problem, as the noir detective usually figures out who’s responsible by finding out who’s trying to stop the investigation. Without this, it’s hard for us to connect the dots Miyabe wants us to connect, so she gives Honma a long (but entirely friendly) interview with a bankruptcy lawyer to make sure we acquire the necessary background. Even the usual order of the investigation is disrupted, as we learn who the criminal is very soon after we learn that a crime has been committed: it’s the questions of how and why that occupy Honma for most of the book.

The result is that there’s not much in the way of suspense. We know the criminal, and we know, roughly, the nature of the crime: most of the book just consists of Honma filling in the details. It’s a rather bureaucratic procedure, so it makes sense that bureaucracies also produce many of Honma’s clues: for instance, you will learn quite a bit about Japan’s family registration system. (The whole investigation is very modern [for a 1990 value of modern]: the trails that Honma follows are of paper, not footprints.) But bureaucracies are not, generally speaking, intrinsically interesting, and in the absence of suspense all that’s left to keep the reader reading is the character of Honma himself. Luckily, he is mostly up to the task, with some of the book’s best scenes being the domestic ones in which the investigation only barely figures. Honma is a widower with a 10-year-old son, who still hasn’t quite gotten over the loss of his wife and worries that his job takes him away from home too often. Such worries are especially pronounced in this case, given that it’s not part of his job: he starts investigating as a favor to a cousin of his late wife, and keeps going after the cousin repudiates him — he didn’t like the results Honma was getting — because he’s curious. And also because he feels increasing sympathy for both the victim and the criminal: it’s this empathy that makes him in turn an easy character for the reader to empathize with. The secondary characters, many of them young women who knew either the criminal or the victim (both young women as well), are also quite well done, and serve to create a secondary theme around the paucity of options available to young women in Japan in 1992. All the young female characters are either doing some sort of essentially secretarial job, or are engaged in one form or another of sex work. Almost as much as the credit card debt, it’s this sense of limited options that seems to have trapped both the criminal and victim: and of course the two work together as well, as sex work, which pays better than the secretarial jobs, is often the only way to pay off that debt. This general feeling of walls closing in creates a sympathy for the characters that makes us want to know more about them, and it is this, rather than the usual desire to solve the mystery, that drives the book. However, the nature of the mystery is such that we never meet either the criminal or the victim, so there’s a limit to the extent to which this can replace good old-fashioned suspense. “All She Was Worth” is better than you would expect a non-mysterious mystery to be, but it’s still not entirely successful. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jan 12, 2019 tatterpunk rated it it was amazing

Shelves: japanese-semester

FIVE STARS: usually I wait until I have read a title a couple times to be certain it's one that will provide increasing returns, but this is the best new book I've read in a long time.

Anyone with a serious interest in noir fiction should be reading Japanese mystery; preferably women writers publishing in the early 1990s and onward. I have no idea what's in the water -- cultural or literal -- that such a specific subset would consistently produce such compelling and complex titles in this partic FIVE STARS: usually I wait until I have read a title a couple times to be certain it's one that will provide increasing returns, but this is the best new book I've read in a long time.

Anyone with a serious interest in noir fiction should be reading Japanese mystery; preferably women writers publishing in the early 1990s and onward. I have no idea what's in the water -- cultural or literal -- that such a specific subset would consistently produce such compelling and complex titles in this particular subgenre. But Miyabe has now joined luminaries like Natsuo Kirino and even Minato Kanae (although she trends more horror than mystery) in my estimation, so there you go.

All She Was Worth (and usually I don't like "re-titling" books for the English market, but that choice was a banger) is the most amazing deconstruction of the femme fatale archetype I have ever seen, with a modern sensibility and psychological depth that puts every cliche about a pretty face with a dark secret to shame. The celluloid-inspired nostalgia of jazz riffs, red lips, and stocking-ed legs emerging from a buttoned trench coat is sent up in smoke. Even Ross Macdonald has competition, although he has the advantage on the prose level of not having to suffer the lens of translation. (For what it's worth, I thought this was a good one, but there were definitely spots where I knew idioms or allusions had been swapped for more recognizable facsimiles to a Western audience. Seriously: when will translation footnotes return from the wars?) But to my mind, Miyabe has carved her own place in the canon of "classic" noir by taking the time to dissect the beating heart of its appeal: the beautiful woman who is portrayed as the invitation to experience the world's evils.

Miyabe makes it look so effortless, you might be fooled into thinking what she's doing is easy. The story itself is very straightforwardly told. Detective Honma of the Tokyo police force is suffering through a twilight of semi-retirement after an injury on the job leaves him in chronic pain and riding a desk. A distant relative of his dead wife comes to him for help: his fiancee has vanished, and under truly unsettling circumstances. But what starts as a missing person becomes a case deeply entrenched in the ills of modern society, involving predatory lending, aspirational self-sabotage, and possibly murder.

Honma's investigation is based in the believable detective work of the pre-internet days. He tracks down acquaintances and information, so there are no dramatic chase scenes, no shoot-outs, no hostage situations. And yet I found myself turning through the pages eagerly, and revelations in even the most mundane context -- conversations in noodle shops, or over tea -- had me captivated. I believe it's because, while Honma and the people he meets throughout the book are interesting in their own right (more on that), the book is a character study of the missing woman. And this is what Miyabe does, so skillfully you might mistake it for a story of Honma going places and talking to people: revealing details and puzzle-pieces at just the right times and in just the right order as to take you through a compelling journey of human understanding. It could have gone wrong so easily, tipping into righteousness or pathos at any turn. But Miyabe doesn't let her central figure fully become a victim or a villain, and so by the time she appears in the flesh she is far and away more fascinating than any other person in the book.

It's an absolute masterstroke, but Miyabe doesn't stop there. All She Was Worth is also a searing indictment of certain elements of modern Japanese life, most especially how these elements affect vulnerable women. The story of the missing fiancee would have gotten the message across clear enough, but what elevates this book is the absolute plethora of fleshed-out female characters, and how they embody the other ways a woman can "turn out." For good or ill -- but there's a definite focus on how both the expectations and constraints of this society are constantly at work on them, and how this guides their choices and relationships. (Again: it's a delicate balance, but Miyabe errs on the side of understanding these women, not pitying them or even moralizing.) The men might participate in the "action," or what there is of it, but women are front and center in every way that matters. Even Honma is a bit of a cipher to the reader, but his touchstone of emotional connection is the memory of his wife and the lingering effect of her life upon his. The result is a deeply compassionate portrait of adult lives in the modern world.

A rich, thoughtful story told in simple language, with imagery I think will linger in my mind for a long time. A truly special book. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jan 03, 2020 Daniel rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: thriller, adult

Miyuki Miyabe
All She Was Worth
Gramedia Pustaka Utama
473 pages
6.1

Miyuki Miyabe's adult thriller, All She Was Worth, portrays an interesting case revolving stolen identity happened in 1990's era. However, the investigation is really long and Miyabe's tendency to add unnecessary details doesn't help, making me question whether finding her is worth it or not. ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Sep 01, 2018 Mizuki rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: chinese-translation, disappointment, japanese-authors

Let's face it, All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe has a rather good English translation, the translator Alfred Birnbaum does have some good writing going for him, and his English does make the story catchy; but on the other hand, the Chinese translation that I read is just one great flat boredom.

I like that the heroine(?) isn't some (view spoiler), she is just a girl struggling to survive in a really bad situation, I also like the story addresses the horro ...more

flag 5 likes · Like · see review

Jul 23, 2010 Siria rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, by-poc, crime-fiction, japanese-fiction

This is quite readable, though I'm not entirely sure why. I found the characterisations quite distant (possibly because of the translation), the mystery not terribly mysterious (mostly focused on finding out how the crime was achieved, not why or by whom), and the ending quite abrupt. Yet some of the book's central themes—the dangers of materialism, of the credit system and how people get caught up in it—are sadly just as relevant now as they were when this book was written in the early 90s. My ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 25, 2016 Jessica Huwae rated it really liked it

Shelves: just-bought

It was my first time reading Miyuki Miyabe's work and I must say that I really enjoyed it. It reminds me of my pre-teen era when I spent of my days reading detective novels before I switched it to more literature books during Uni years. I love the way Ms Miyabe narrates things, so lyrical, yet it stays in your head for long. Will look forward to read more of her works soon. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 29, 2021 Divine Anas rated it liked it

Shelves: japanese-translated, asian-reps-and-authors, mystery-crime-thriller, 2021-reads

Finally, read the first book of my 2021! This was pretty interesting to read and I love the social commentary on the gravity of debts and consumerism. Yup, totally not the usual theme you'd see on Japanese crime fiction. I also don't think that this was a thriller, to be honest, but it's more of a slow burn trail of mystery-solving, so I do understand why the usual thrill-seeking reader won't enjoy this much.

I've also seen a lot of reviews complaining about why there has to be some sort of long- Finally, read the first book of my 2021! This was pretty interesting to read and I love the social commentary on the gravity of debts and consumerism. Yup, totally not the usual theme you'd see on Japanese crime fiction. I also don't think that this was a thriller, to be honest, but it's more of a slow burn trail of mystery-solving, so I do understand why the usual thrill-seeking reader won't enjoy this much.

I've also seen a lot of reviews complaining about why there has to be some sort of long-drawn-out almost Wikipedia-ish excerpt on the intricacies of the Japanese credit process and loan sharks (found in Chapter 11). I get the point that it was kind of boring to read or sounded straight from an academic study.

However, I honestly thought that this was an essential part of the book because it already introduced the root cause of the mystery in the first place. I felt like some readers were kind of out of touch to just lump this part as an unnecessary info dump because this is the reality of other people in different parts of the world. Personally, this resonated with me because I live in a lower middle class household where one accident or one loan can simply wipe out our financial foundation.
"Debts drive people to suicide. They break up homes, force people to skip town...It sounds unbelievable in this day and age, but tragedies occur all the time, for sheer lack of knowledge about the ins and outs of personal bankruptcy."
There's commentary on what drives consumerism as well that still rings true even to this day. I think that privileged readers who never get to experience the gravity of accumulated debt or don't live from paycheck to paycheck wouldn't really understand this.

I appreciated the message that Miyabe fleshed out here. When you look at it, the translated title is quite an apt choice.

Now when it comes to the whole mystery unfolding, I liked the steady trail of clues. Though I've seen some minor typos and other parts where the POVs shifted all of a sudden. Totally not the author's fault but more so on the editing team. I believe that some parts may have been lost in translation that's why it kind of put off my reading experience sometimes.

Also, there were just some happenings and clues that seem quite implausible to reach. I personally enjoyed reading this though the ending sputtered for me. Nevertheless, All She Was Worth is something that I'm glad I've read at the right time of my life.

As an utterly "new" to adulting, my personal finance has been weighing on my mind so much these days, and reading about how worse it could get when not in check really felt like a piece of friendly advice for me. I've bought this a month ago and only read it on whim. Books could really surprise you in many ways you can never begin to imagine huh. ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Oct 16, 2018 Ian Josh rated it liked it

Some good parts, so much time spent on economics...

Full review coming November 2018

https://ianjoshyateswriting.blogspot....
...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 19, 2012 Nikki rated it it was ok

The blurb on the back says that All She Was Worth is an "artful blending of puzzle-solving and social commentary," and I suppose it does blend those two, but I'm not sure about how artfully it was done. The social commentary part was pretty heavy-handed, with more than one long-winded description of the evils of the credit industry. The thing is, those descriptions weren't even really necessary; the story got that message through without them.

There were a couple parts I didn't really understand ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jun 23, 2009 Louise rated it liked it

I picked up All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe a few months ago because I liked Brave Story, a novel geared towards younger audiences. All She Was Worth was Miyabe’s first adult book that I’ve read and one of the few mystery novels I’ve read this year.

All She Was Worth starts off with the disappearance of a woman and follows an on-leave detective as he tries to find her and uncover the unusual circumstances in which she disappeared. Although that’s the main mystery flowing through the book, I di ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 26, 2013 Marina Sofia rated it liked it

This is a solid mystery written very much in the Western style rather than Japanese. Semi-retired Inspector Honma is a patient, not terribly charismatic but well-meaning middle-aged man who gets involved in his nephew's problem about a missing fiance. Bit by bit, in drips and drabs - sometimes in increments far too small - we find out more about the woman who has disappeared and just what she has been up to. A very realistic description of an investigation, perhaps, at a pace that is more remini ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 03, 2018 ُكَريــــــمَة rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Whaouh! what a thriller!
so uncommun story! just amazing!
i can give another title to this novel: When a credit card becomes a one way ticket to hell!
the story is about Honma an inspector recovering from a work related injury, when a cousin of his deceased wife asks him to look for his missing fiancée who run away when he found out about her bankruptcy.
and so when Honma starts his unofficial invistigation, it will quickly highlight the fact that Shoko (the fiancée) lived in a false identity. So w ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2017 Sifa Farisa rated it it was amazing

My kind of psychological thriller, genre that I like. Though the pace is pretty slow like typical Japanese novel, but it really is worth reading.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

May 18, 2018 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literature, zz1992, crime, aa-japanlit, miyabe-miyuki, aaa-top-translation, translation, historicity, all-five-star, feminismlit

180518:lost the review for this one. definitely five stars. lonely, moody, tragic, wistful. i think i dropped the first review because i was going to read it again... other books distracted me...

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 29, 2018 Tom Sos rated it liked it

This is a period piece. A gentle thriller about stolen identity written, before that phrase became a commplace vase to place a wide-range of crimes and misdemeanors, about a year before the internet blossomed Mosaic was the big browser on the internet, which was usually called the Wide World Web or the Information Superhighway. Nobody had any foreshadowing of the need for "social media" or the danger that their whole life could be assembled by strangers from central databases. It turns out, howe This is a period piece. A gentle thriller about stolen identity written, before that phrase became a commplace vase to place a wide-range of crimes and misdemeanors, about a year before the internet blossomed Mosaic was the big browser on the internet, which was usually called the Wide World Web or the Information Superhighway. Nobody had any foreshadowing of the need for "social media" or the danger that their whole life could be assembled by strangers from central databases. It turns out, however, that Japan already had an ominous pre-digital database, the Family Register. (Email was already the main mode of communication in the US, but it is not mentioned in this story.) There is quite a bit of didactic speech-making in this book on the topics of the Family Register and the Japanese Credit Crisis of the early 1990s, but that may have been added by the translator.

The protagonist is Honma, a police detective on disability leave, spinning his wheels at home. Honma is presented with the mysterious dissappearance of the fiancee of his n times removed cousin by marriage. The wheels that are spinning are those of ratiocination not those of locomotion, because he has been injured by an assailants bullet. Though Honma is presented as a lovable crumpled gimp, the man has obvious superpowers. His superpower is his extraordinary insight. Thus, the eager reader is never called upon to don his thinking cap; all one can do is follow along faithfully as Honma assembles his ragtag collection of Samurai to help him solve the puzzle of the disappearance of the young Shoko. (view spoiler)
There is the stoic Tsuneo who was originally an architect, but is reduced to housekeeping for his friend due to the Credit Crisis; he is naturally joined by his wife, the stalwart Hisae. There is Mizoguchi the crusading and browbeating bankruptcy lawyer and his assistant, who provide the critical link between the original victim (poor of posture crooked of tooth) and her usurper (long-legged and straight of tooth). There is the technical master of forensics, the police colleague Funaki, and, of course, the eager bumpkin Tomotsu. (Go ahead, count 'em.) The jilted beuax of Shoko, the spider woman, play the role of the hapless villagers.

There is the faintes note of romance for Honma when he meets a certain Nobuko, and this note echoes several times before fading out without Honma and Nabuko ever meeting again. Things happen fast in the book; any downtime we share with Honma is spent with (always) fruitful research and, at least figuratively, map-making.

Things are happening so fast that you realize that the back of the book is coming at you faster than the horizon of the plot where you imagine the denouement taking place. So, as they close in on , you are wondering...(view spoiler) I like it like that.

This was a smooth and quick read. A slight dreariness (using the weather mostly…e.g, polluted snow) gives it just the correct touch of "noir". In atmosphere and pacing it reminded me a little of Finnish roman policiers. I recommend it. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 17, 2019 Elizabeth Higginbotham rated it really liked it

All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe had been in my shelf for a long time. Published in 1992 and recognized as the best novel and best mystery in Japan the book is amazing. We follow a Japanese detective who is on leave due to an injury. He has a young son and they are both coping with the lost of the wife/mother, Chizuko, who was killed in an accident. They are close with a couple, the Isakas, whose lives were challenged by economic times, but the man, Tsuneo, loves housekeeping and cooking, so h All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe had been in my shelf for a long time. Published in 1992 and recognized as the best novel and best mystery in Japan the book is amazing. We follow a Japanese detective who is on leave due to an injury. He has a young son and they are both coping with the lost of the wife/mother, Chizuko, who was killed in an accident. They are close with a couple, the Isakas, whose lives were challenged by economic times, but the man, Tsuneo, loves housekeeping and cooking, so he watches young Makoto while Shunsuke Homna works and now is going to physical therapy to recover. His wife has a successful business, so this is a partnership that works.

The plot revolves around Jan, Homna’s wife’s brother’s son, who comes with a problem. His fiancée has disappeared, after he discovered that she had a bankruptcy in her past, and was missing critical identification documents. When Jan confronts her, after challenging others who shared this information, which as a banker he could access, she disappears. Shoko Sekine, was not an educated woman, so Jan’s family did not support the marriage, but he was intent. Yet, he comes to his relative to help him find her.

Homna takes on the task, but it is difficult since the woman had not been honest about her past, even forge a resume with company names that did not exist. Jan is upset and not supportive of the search, but Homna is caught in the mystery. The book reveals much about the operation of Japan, how laws about identification can make it hard for someone to disappear. Yet, also how people who cannot make ends meet, get caught up in borrowing and then having to escape this life. We see the mixture of Japan as a capitalist nation. Shoko Sekine’s identity is stolen by another woman, who was also seeking to escape her own past.

The plot is nicely woven, but you see many issues in the process. There are many people involved in different ways, making it hard to follow at time. Homna’s son worries about his father, as well as facing issues as a young boy. The people who were part of Shoko Sekine’s life also play a part. A old friend, Tamotsu, joins in the investigation, leaving his wife and child to pursue what happened to his childhood friend. Once, Homna discovers that it is Kyoko Shinjo who poses as Shoko Sekine, we also see the difficulties her own family faced with debt.

We learn much about the sections of Japan, the different climates, geography and personalities. Homna while he is not actively on duty, does engage people on the force to help him. He also offers advice on their own cases.

A nice job in the story telling and much learning about the economic underside of Japan.
...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 05, 2020 Madhulika Liddle rated it really liked it

Detective Inspector Honma of the Metropolitan Police is on leave, recuperating from an injury, when he receives a visit from a relative. Young, rich and successful Jun comes to ask for help: his fiancée, Shoko Sekine, has gone missing. She seems to have bolted shortly after Jun broached the topic of getting her a credit card. Jun asks Honma to (informally, not as a cop) look for Shoko.

So Honma gets on the job, and discovers something very murky. Shoko Sekine had, some years back, filed for bank Detective Inspector Honma of the Metropolitan Police is on leave, recuperating from an injury, when he receives a visit from a relative. Young, rich and successful Jun comes to ask for help: his fiancée, Shoko Sekine, has gone missing. She seems to have bolted shortly after Jun broached the topic of getting her a credit card. Jun asks Honma to (informally, not as a cop) look for Shoko.

So Honma gets on the job, and discovers something very murky. Shoko Sekine had, some years back, filed for bankruptcy. And, when he digs deeper, shuttling between a lawyer, various offices, old friends of Shoko’s and more, even greater dirt is dug up than Honma had imagined.

I liked the way Miyuki Miyabe keeps the pace going in this novel: it’s not as if there’s a lot of high-adrenalin action happening (there isn’t, none), but the swift way in which a complicated but perfectly logical story comes to light is very interesting. It all makes sense, and Honma’s investigation makes for a good police procedural (even though, since he’s on leave, he never uses the clout of the police to actually carry out the investigation—which helps make it that much more clever).

Alongside the mystery angle of All She Was Worth are the other aspects of the story. For one, there’s Honma’s home life, his relationship with his ten-year old son Makato and with the neighbours, the Isakas, who do much of the looking after of the motherless Makato when Honma is away. Then there is the personality of the woman Jun knew as Shoko Sekine, who slowly reveals herself through her actions to be something more than just what Honma might have put her down as in the beginning.

Plus, there is the insight into the rampant consumerism and the debt trap that, even today, is so much a problem for so many millions who fall prey to it. Miyabe explains it well, and with empathy, marrying hard fact with the subtler intricacies of what a life lived on the edge would be like for those who fall victim to it.

An engrossing book, and a fascinating glimpse into the Japan of the early 1990s.
...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 01, 2020 Melissa C rated it liked it

Shelves: crime

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 15, 2019 John rated it liked it · review of another edition

Tokyo cop Shunsuke Honma is in the midst of a few months' sick leave to recover from being shot in the knee in the line of duty. A distant cousin begs him, as a favor, to track down the cousin's fiancée Shoko Sekine, who has suddenly vanished from sight on it being discovered she has a bankruptcy in her past. Reluctantly, because of his gammy leg and because, as a widower, he'd rather use his sick leave to spend time with young son Makoto, Honma agrees to take on a case that soon proves to be on Tokyo cop Shunsuke Honma is in the midst of a few months' sick leave to recover from being shot in the knee in the line of duty. A distant cousin begs him, as a favor, to track down the cousin's fiancée Shoko Sekine, who has suddenly vanished from sight on it being discovered she has a bankruptcy in her past. Reluctantly, because of his gammy leg and because, as a widower, he'd rather use his sick leave to spend time with young son Makoto, Honma agrees to take on a case that soon proves to be one of identity theft: the woman who disappeared was not the real Shoko Sekine but someone else who stole her name and her past, and much else . . .

I have rather mixed feelings about this novel, which I found for the most part engrossing but on rather too frequent occasion a bit turgid. The two sections of maximum turgidity are unfortunately important for the reader's comprehension of the book. The first such section -- an extended explanation of how identity is legally and otherwise recognized in Japan, which differs from the way it's done in most other parts of the world -- is essential for Western readers. The second, longer but in itself more interesting, concerns the history of credit-card use in Japan, and the revelation of the way that credit-card-induced debt has thoroughly corrupted society, with the civilized debt-collectors of the banks and credit agencies being part of the same spectrum as the thugs of the loan sharks and yakuza into whose clutches too many credit-card debtors sooner or later fall. As I say, this account is potentially pretty interesting, but it's presented as a sort of solid lump that had me rolling my eyes a little.

The other worry I had was that a lot of the conclusions Honma comes to -- or that the members of the little team of volunteers he assembles come to -- seem to be based more on inspired guesswork or even Honma's coply instincts than on actual evidence-based deduction. It's all very well for detectives (or anyone else) to produce hypotheses based on what they've found out; but in good detective or police-procedural novels, as in real life, a good many of those hypotheses should fall by the wayside or be positively misleading.

And yet, as I say, All She Was Worth, aided by Alfred Birnbaum's very serviceable translation, is for the most part pretty compelling reading. I enjoyed spending time with Honma, who's a very engaging character, and I grew to like some of the team he gathered, such as Tamotsu, the auto mechanic who was sweet on Shoko when they were both highschoolers and whose wife has told him he must work with Honma or otherwise she'll never be rid of his past. Makoto, who helps out on odd occasion, is a likable kid, a nicely portrayed character whose presence often made me smile. Ah, we old softies.

Another strength is that, even as we develop a sympathy for the victim, Shoko, we also develop a grudging sympathy for the criminal who stole her identity, however appalling that individual's actions, because she too is in her way a victim -- but of criminals who'll never be apprehended for any crime.

When we in the West think of the "sordid underbelly" of Japan, that superficially squeaky-clean society, with all its jangle and color, we tend to ignore things like the whaling and the capital punishment and conjure up images of murderous yakuza gangs, their cruelty and the corruption they inevitably bring. But in All She Was Worth Miyuki Miyabe presents us with another, only slightly overlapping view of what can erode a society. At the same time, she's presenting us with a mirror in which only the most insensitive could fail to see some of the flaws that plague our own culture. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Oct 19, 2018 Agnetta rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: japanese-literature, crimi

Laborious investigation, very realistic, but I think these kind of stories, I would rather watch the movie. From a book, a novel, I always expect something more than just a story, with an outcome, I want to really learn something new about "humanity"... which here is rather lacking, for me, as we do not get a lot of insight in the actual mental dynamics of our criminal...

The last 20 pages were really good.

It was ok, well structured, well written, but not my favorite genre. I may try other novel ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 19, 2020 Ardita Çaesari rated it really liked it

This story would have been far creepier (Japanese level creepy) if it reduces less details on consumer lending and restructures the way it was written.

However, presented in a linear and chronological manner, following the perspective of one person (happens to be a man), made the book easier for the writer to write. Although I sort of lost in the timeline since it was not written in the chapters.

A gem!

(Though I still hold “Out” (1997) as the creepiest, goriest, and most thrilling Japanese crime s ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Bookoholics: Book Discussion # 102 ; Genre Crime/Mystery: All She Was Worth	1	10	Nov 09, 2018 03:45PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Mystery

154 users

Cultural > Japan

139 users

Fiction

104 users

Asian Literature > Japanese Literature

73 users

Mystery > Crime

43 users

Thriller

26 users

Thriller > Mystery Thriller

21 users

Literature > Asian Literature

18 users

Cultural > Asia

15 users

Literature

15 users

See top shelves…

About Miyuki Miyabe

Miyuki Miyabe

426 followers

See also 宮部みゆき (Japanese language profile) and 宮部美幸 (Chinese language profile).

Miyuki Miyabe (宮部みゆき Miyabe Miyuki) is a popular contemporary Japanese author active in a number of genres including science fiction, mystery fiction, historical fiction, social commentary, and juvenile fiction.
Miyabe started writing novels at the age of 23. She has been a prolific writer, publishing dozens of novels a ...more