地面師たち

Tokyo Swindlers

by Ko Shinjo, 新庄耕

辻本拓海は大物地面師・ハリソン山中と出会い、彼のもとで不動産詐欺を行っていた。メンバーは元司法書士の後藤、土地の情報を集める図面師の竹下、土地所有者の「なりすまし役」を手配する麗子の五人。彼らはハリソンの提案で泉岳寺駅至近にある市場価格100億円という広大な土地に狙いをつける。一方、定年が迫った刑事の辰は、かつて逮捕したが不起訴に終わったハリソン山中を独自に追っていた――。次々と明らかになる地面師たちの素顔、未だかつてない綱渡りの取引、難航する辰の捜査。それぞれの思惑が交錯した末に待ちうけていた結末とは？　実在の事件をモチーフに描いた新時代のクライムノベル。

Genres: Japan, Mystery Thriller, Fiction, Japanese Literature

288 pages, Tankobon Hardcover

First published December 5, 2019

Reviews

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I wasn't at all clear about what this book would be about because I'm very good at skimming blurbs so I'm often surprised by the content.

Tokyo Swindlers is about a group of people who manage to swindle big companies out of billions of yen by pretending they own land that is actually owned by others.

I'm not clear on whether the detective Tatsu has featured in other books by this author but he plays a very minor role in this one. So don't get the idea that it's a book about bad guys getting their comeuppance - far from it.

What we actually get is two instances of how big companies are easily fooled into handing over vast amounts of cash for land that is then found to belong to someone else. Only one of the players - Takumi - seems to show any responsibility or shame for his acts but he joined the gang to expunge the shame he felt that his father had been similarly swindled many years before.

I've got to admit that the amounts involved sound utterly insane. Having bought land in Ireland (3/4 acre for €39,000) it seems ludicrous that a lesser amount of land costs the equivalent of €61,500,000. But land in Tokyo is precious so just bear that in mind when you are reading this.

What baffled me about this book is it's lack of any real direction. We get two similar swindles, we have a few deaths, we have a detective who is retiring and we have possibly the oddest (and most hilarious) sex scene at the end of the book.

I kept reading because I expected an exciting denouement but it was just as average as the rest of the book. Parts were interesting but I would not class this as a detective novel or a thriller. Perhaps its a piece of advice for Japanese city dwellers.

Thankyou to Netgalley for the advance review copy.

[GONZA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally a book about Japan where they are not all perfect and talking to the dead. All kidding aside, a novel that tells the underworld side of Japan, but without lingering in the glories of the yakuza, but rather in human miseries. The pace is high and the characters definitely plausible.

Finalmente un libro sul Giappone dove non sono tutti perfetti e parlano con i morti. A parte gli scherzi, un romanzo che racconta la parte del Giappone della malavita, senza peró indugiare nei fasti della yakuza, quanto piuttosto nelle miserie umane. Il ritmo é alto e i personaggi decisamente credibili.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

[Bella Azam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came into this book blind even though I knew there is a Netflix adaptation and I saw Go Ayano so obviously I need to watch it. Luckily I didnt watch it first because I'm the kind of person who need to read the book first before watching the adaptation for the fear of spoiler. Boy, I'm glad because now I know what to expect and pleasantly surprised that the Netflix series actually did a better adaptation and bolder than the original book. Let me explain

Tokyo Swindlers hinged on the land swindlers or real estate scammers in Tokyo that intelligently headed by the leader, negotiator, recruiter, informer and the impersonator to scam people of buying a land that is not sellable. This group of fraudsters meticulously picked their victim, both the real estate owners and the buyer as they sell a piece of their land and used an impersonator to disguise as the real owner. In this book, there are two firms that got scammed by this group - Mike Home and Sekiyo House. Turned out the scam involving Sekiyo House did occured with the actual company Sekisui House was scammed to buying a plot of land in Shinagawa Ward for 5.5billion yen! Its kinda wild how these land swindlers managed to forged legit documents like driving license, land property certificates and even hired actors or actresses to disguise as the owner

The story was thrilling to say the least because it involved high stakes of heist & scams which we saw Takumi, a man with a tragic past as a part of the fraud group, Harrison Yamanaka, the calculating leader, Reiko, recruiter of the group, Takeshita, drug addict and informer, Goto, the judicial scrivnier and the man whom acted as agent. The pacing of the book was quite slow in my opinion with a lack of directive plot and the ending does feel anti-climatic. There is a Detective Tatsu that is on the verge of retirement but got a hunch of the scam, his deduction ability gets him to the answer real quickly which left the reader much to crave for. Not a fan of some of the explicit scenes particularly the weird (albeit funny) s*x scenes cuz that was so unnecessary 😌, the misogyny are quite rampant which is a bit off putting

This book was less thrilling than expected but if you are a fan of some heist book that actually did teach you on how scams worked, this is actually enjoyable to read based on this premise. Have to say the Netlfix adaptation supersede this book by far with how complex they made the second case even though the explicitness of some of the scenes are actually laughable at times but yknow good fun times 😂

Thank you Stone Bridge Press for the review copy

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this to be quite entertaining as well as informative. An unscrupulous gang of Japanese rascals practice land swindles, employing some extremely complicated methods, but the rewards are great. What I found informative was the mathematics involved in determining the value of a piece of real estate in Tokyo currently being used as, say, a parking lot. I must admit to ignorance of the Network series, which I shall look up, and that this is based on fact. But I was entertained throughout.

[Waka · Rating 4 out of 5]

普段は原作の本を読んでから映像化された作品を見ることが多いが、今回は逆でNetflixを見てから原作を読んだ。原作の方がハリソンのぶっ飛んでいる感と変態差が増しているが、Netflixでは残虐さが全面的に出ている。また、珍しく映像化された作品の方がよく出来ていると思った。例えば、小川が予定よりも早く帰宅するシーンでは、確実に映像の方が登場人物の切迫感をよく伝えられていたり、土地を抑えられたと思い込んでいる青柳の歓喜も映像の方が大きかった。実際にこのような事件が過去に起きているというから驚きである。原作がクライムサスペンスとして強烈に読者を惹きつけ、評価されているからこそ、映像作品も注目され、大成功を収めることのできた、成功の土台となる作品である。

[Lanie Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

As Tsujimoto Takumi's life falls apart in the wake of the deaths of his wife and son, he drifts from dead end job to dead end job. At one of these jobs, he meets a man by the name of Harrison Yamanaka, who offers to pay Takumi handsomely to run simple errands. It doesn't take a genius to figure out these errands are highly illegal, but the works are not bad, and Takumi doesn't have to work any harder than necessary. Soon after he starts working for Harrison, Harrison offers him to come into his inner circle as a land swindler in Tokyo. Almost as soon as he starts in this dangerous, yet thrilling career, Takumi begins to see the same patterns in his new "job" as those that had lead to his family's death, and he begins to realize that is boss may be far worse than a man just conning some corporations out of billions.

This was a pretty straightforward heist novel. Pretty standard cast of characters for the genre, other than them being a bit older than normal (which was nice), and a predictable plot line pretty much from the minute we find out what lead Takumi's family's death. It was still a fun quick read, though, in the way a story about a bunch of con artists getting away with it can be. Especially since we find out some interesting things about the people they are swindling. The group Harrison puts together are as cold as they get and have zero remorse for what they are doing but I found that I had thanks to the information Harrison has dug up on their targets I didn't feel entirely bad about them getting robbed blind. Especially Aoyagi, dude was a grade A sleazeball and deserved whatever he got for being a moron.

Oh, and Harrison is an absolute psychopath, and while he makes up very little of the story, I think it's really important to keep in mind that he sees something of himself in Takumi.

Overall, I'd recommend this for anyone looking for a fast-paced, crime novel that's more about how low we are willing to sink when we allow our grief to swallow us.

As always, thanks to Stone Bridge Press and Netgalley for the eArc!

[Virgowriter (Brad Windhauser) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Fun story, but some of the prose gets bogged down in exposition too often.

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

There's a flashback early on in Tokyo Swindlers explaining how Takumi, the hapless and supposedly sympathetic main character, came to work for the crime boss Yamanaka. Employed at the time as a driver, Takumi comes upon a scene in which one of the call girls he has been charged with driving is accusing the client of raping her. The oily client, who of course turns out to be Yamanaka, confidently asserts that the call girl is lying, and had invited him to perform the acts she now claims were non-consensual; he pulls out a hidden tape recorder to vindicate his side of the story. Takumi, despite working for the call girl agency, refuses a bribe from Yamanaka and promises he never intended to take sides in the issue; if the call girl wants to pursue action against the client, that is her own affair, and Takumi will not act as a witness on either side. He is then fired by the agency "without being given the slightest opportunity to defend himself" and calls up Yamanaka, who was so impressed with Takumi's neutrality that he offered him a business card on the spot. Soon, Takumi winds up working for Yamanaka, amongst the circle of con men who are apparently so amoral they don't even really try to justify their swindling by thinking of themselves as gentlemen bandits or Robin Hood types.

At this point, the book had immediately downgraded itself to a one-star read for me: either the scene was a portrayal of rape, or of a false accusation, and either way it's pretty heinous to call upon such a loaded and triggering topic for no deeper reason than to serve as a meet-cute between a listless drifter and his crime boss employer. I wasn't encouraged by the fact that, up to this point, female characters had been described exclusively by their breast size (always large) and their subservience to the male characters. The only woman with a somewhat sizeable role in the plot, Reiko, is more or less competent at her job (recruiting and coaching actors to play roles in the con), but is frequently characterized as a whiny, hysterical bimbo--with large breasts.

Still, I decided to give the author the benefit of the doubt and not DNF the book. At this point in the story, Takumi is revealed to have a Tragic Backstory--namely, losing his entire family in a house fire--and it seemed that his error in judgment in going to work for a crime boss was meant to be dismissed as a result of his depressive apathy stemming from his overwhelming grief. I thought perhaps the sex worker who had claimed to be raped would reappear in the story, be given complexity and depth and insight, and Takumi would gradually come to realize his mistake and reclaim his morality.

That doesn't happen. The incident is never touched upon again and apparently is meant to be taken by the reader at face value. Instead Takumi befriends a man with a burned face, which I guess is meant to be his "save the cat" moment, and his disillusionment with Yamanaka comes about entirely from a deus ex machina in the form of a retired detective, who gives Takumi evidence that Yamanaka is not the stand-up honorable guy that Takumi thought but is instead a psychopathic swine with no sense of loyalty who will betray anyone within his own organization if it suits him, and may perhaps have already betrayed Takumi on a more personal level than Takumi could have ever dreamed. And like...duh, Takumi.

I understand that people get enmeshed in toxic relationships of all types. The problem is that Yamanaka is pretty much a periphery figure throughout the novel. Apart from the fact that he offers Takumi a job, you get zero sense of why Takumi feels so beholden to this crime boss, whose smile is constantly described as unnerving. You'd think that the story here is how Yamanaka used Takumi's grief to manipulate him into loyal servitude; in this version of Tokyo Swindlers, Yamanaka would be charming and conniving, and Tamuki would be operating under some illusion that the crime boss cares for him personally; the fact that Takumi's father is revealed to be in prison for setting the very fire that took Takumi's family from him suggests that Yamanaka might become a kind of surrogate father to this ailing man. Instead, Takumi really doesn't seem to harbor thoughts of any depth about anything in particular, and regards Yamanaka as a scary guy who is probably capable of pretty monstrous things. He isn't even surprised when a member of the crew turns up dead and immediately thinks Yamanaka had something to do with it. Why he is then crestfallen to imagine that Yamanaka might betray him personally is anyone's guess. Takumi is like those Trump voters who suddenly act all victimized when the politician who told them openly that he is going to screw over as many non-rich folks as possible suddenly enacts a policy that affects them negatively.

On top of all its other problems, the book is dull. You never come to care about the swindlers, who are only drawn sketchily. (One of the members is given the annoying trait of talkin' like the Bowery Boys, abbreviatin' all his present participles and insertin' "ya" for "you" even when he's tryin' 'a talk formal-like to the prospective marks.) There's no sense of camaraderie in the gang; the only thing that seems to motivate anyone is money. They don't even seem to get off on the excitement of the con. The company men they are swindling are so utterly stupid and careless, there's never any sense that a job might go sideways. The fact that each chapter is 40-50 pages long might convey something about the story's languid pace.

Perhaps the ultimate crime in a story about con men is that you don't even get any insight into the techniques that real criminals in the lifestyle might employ to fool their targets; while movies like The Sting, and shows like White Collar, walk the viewer thought every step of the process and illustrate the failsafes, Plan B's, and spur-of-the-moment improvisations that matchstick men employ to cover every contingency, the titular swindlers here just show up with the documents already forged and the information already memorized. They're constantly sweating, with nervous glints in their eyes, and the minimal ad-libbing they engage in tends to amount to playground distraction tactics like, "Gee, what a nice view we have here...." Con, in case we forget, stands for "confidence", and this team exhibits none. They are not smart; everyone else is just abysmally stupid.

What tends to make these kinds of stories fun is the fact that the person being conned is usually a villain in their own right, which makes the con men into underdogs delivering a powerful man his comeuppance. But because Ko Shinjo really needs Yamanaka to be the baddest of bad guys in order to pivot this dull book into an attempt at an impotent revenge tale at the last minute--long after the wind has gone out of its sails--you don't even get that base level of vicarious exhilaration.

Don't worry, though--if what you really want is a badly written, off-puttingly explicit, and completely gratuitous sex scene between a high-powered businessman we don't care about and his secretary, Tokyo Swindlers will reward your patience.

[Zaniah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coming into this reading experience with the premise on my mind, I was excited for what was in store for me: The male MC is bound by his past and in an attempt to free himself from its clutches, he joins a team of people who commit acts of real estate fraud, bringing in large sums of money. However, something is amiss because no matter how successful these operations are, Takumi still feels an emptiness that threatens to conquer him. On the other hand, we have a retiring detective who's put on a case that he's compelled to solve - even if it means spending less time with his wife - because it'll absolve him of his past. Takumi and the retiring detective share that connection and it's all because of one person.

Now, with that in mind, I am happy to say that this book is fairly decent given its length because a lot happens. I found the storytelling to be quite interesting as it was heavily detailed in terms of setting up how these real estate fraud operations commence. Though confused at times, I also enjoyed the switches in character POVs (it made me feel like I did when I read Murakami's Kafka on the Shore - anticipating the two MCs' meeting). Additionally, despite the typos - which I get are inevitable in works of translation - this story was really well written in that it kept me engaged.

On the other hand, I felt that because this story wasn't told in first person POV, but rather third person omniscient, there was a feeling of detachment that I didn't really appreciate. This didn't help with how affected Takumi was by his past - even though I did feel for him when what happened was revealed. Even so, besides Tatsu (the aforementioned retiring detective), none of the characters were even remotely likable to me. These two things are really my only plights with the story, but overall, I had a fairly good time reading this and I'm excited to watch the Netflix adaptation!

[Letter From Afifah (Afifah) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3-3.25/5 ⭐

Review:
✨I just don’t know how to properly articulate my thoughts on this story honestly.
✨There are two land-frauds here, but more focus on the second project.
✨In terms of plot, for me, it is not too fast-paced enough in my opinion. However, there are still moments of suspense here and there, especially around the last third of this story. Most of the scenes have connections to Takumi because he is the MC.
✨This is because the earlier parts are about the first fraud, Takumi’s background story, and the swindler team’s planning for the second project.
✨In terms of characters, I could roughly divide them into five categories: the main team, the accomplices, Takumi’s past, the police and the victims.
✨The main team is the main focus of the story, especially Takumi and Harrison because he is the team leader. Those member’s fate at the end are quite expected by looking at their crimes and how their leader is.
✨The accomplices' fates are relatively unknown besides one person from the first case. I do actually have some pity for him actually, but, somebody wants to cut loose ends.
✨Appearance of characters from Takumi’s past and the police are minor, but they do affect the ending actually.
✨For Aoyaga, I felt he did deserve the ending. There are several red flags that indicate something fishy is happening, but he chooses to ignore them because of his goal.
✨I would say the atmosphere of this story is cold, but there are still some heartwarming parts, such as when Takumi and Nagai meet for the first time.
✨For me, Harrison Yamanaka is the true mastermind of this story, and he is basically a psychopath.
✨For Takumi, I don’t know what to feel about him. But based on the ending, I hope he can find enlightenment.
✨Generally, I have a hard time getting through this story except during the climax and the ending. I’m not sure if this story has a sequel, but if it has a sequel that focuses more on Takumi and the police, I’m interested.
✨I’m not sure when I can watch the Netflix adaptation, but the trailer looks interesting.
✨Thank you to Stone Bridge Press and NetGalley for this ARC! This review was voluntarily written by me.

[RegretfulPenguin · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 and a half-ish stars?

I'm trying to find some positive aspects about Tokyo Swindlers, though I don't know what I was expecting. The thing that I liked the most, probably, was the insights and flashbacks on Takumi's life before becoming a swindler, because they give the reader the opportunity to get to know his reasons on a deeper level. Despite this, it still felt thin. The reason why he becomes a con artist (no spoilers) are not strong enough for me (or maybe not presented properly? One time it seems he does that out of economical desperation, the other time to regain some...uh...dignity, for a lack of better term? Another time I'm lead to think he's doing it to fill the void he has within himself...I don't know, I'm confused. Maybe it doesn't matter.)

Aside from Takumi and Tatsu, the policeman, the other characters are unsufferable. And I don't mean merely unlikable or unrelatable. I wanted them to go die in a fire. I was sorry for Takumi, but other than that, I didn't care for any of them. I'd have appreciated more space for police investigation, in general more light shed on Tatsu, who is a mere tool to the plot and not much else. Ok, I know there's a sequel to this, so maybe he's dedicated more space in the second installment...just maybe.

Finally, the plot felt submerged in a myriad of other details that weren't necessary. The idea at the bottom is valid, but maybe it needed to be developed in another way. Also, I had the feeling that many things were a problem of translation, rather than writing.

I'll see if I can watch the series, perhaps it works better as a screenplay.

Thanks to NetGalley and Stone Bridge Press for making the ARC openly available!

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Real Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A contemporary Japanese crime thriller unravels an intricate web of deception and greed, inspired by recent land-fraud scandals.

Takumi, grieving the tragic loss of his family, is drawn into a real-estate swindle masterminded by fabled land scammer Harrison Yamanaka. The target is an unprecedented $70-million property. During his pursuit, Detective Tatsu, upright as ever but nearing retirement, discovers Harrison's strange connection to Takumi's past. As the high-stakes fraud unfolds, the convergence of motives leads to a shocking outcome in this intense game of deception versus truth.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I liked this nasty little exposé of the vilest kind of greed inherent in late-stage capitalism. Netflix thought this was a good story, too. (That's the YouTube trailer.)

I can't get to a fourth star because I have no clue if this is a mystery that's a complete failure, or a handily fictionalized true-crime story so there can be dialogue in place of infodumps. There's drama, but there's no narrative frame to speak of. The "detective" is negligible in word count. The story is, however, as gripping as Of Saints and Miracles .

Stone Bridge Press charges $9.95 for an ebook. Seems like good value, if your expectations are set properly, to me.

[DC Palter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this book. I previously watched the Netflix series and was familiar with the real Sekisui Home swindle on which the book was based. I'd read parts of the book in Japanese, and was planning to review this English version for Japonica, the journal of Japanese culture.

Unfortunately, something went wrong with the translation. It is not very good. In fact, I was unable to finish reading.

I went back and looked at the original Japanese novel, and it's decent. The translation, though, suffers from 2 problems. First, the dialogue in the original is written in heavy Osaka dialect. Imagine a mafia novel set in NYC. It's tough to translate. Unfortunately, it gets translated into some kind of weird English slang that doesn't work.

Second, it looks like the translation was done quickly. The nuance isn't there. And the flow is completely missing. It feels like a first draft. It needed a second draft and a third draft to smooth it out and convert it from a literal line-by-line textbook translation to an enjoyable English novel.

This is one example where the movie/tv show is better than the book.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've become a great fan of Japanese crime fiction,both contemporary and "Golden Age", so I was looking forward to reading Tokyo Swindlers by Ko Shinjo.
Sadly while it's a very interesting look into the world of "land sharks" and the shadowy world of land fraud in Japan it's very far from thrilling. Apparently the book has been made into a Netflix story and it reads very much like "the book of the movie", making me wonder if the series or the book came first, and never quite hits the spot. That's a real shame as the plot is good,some of the characters are very interesting but it never gets beyond ,"an ok read" and there's key part that I would have thought was clever if I hadn't already read a very similar scene in the same setting in a Scandinavian detective novel several years ago.
I really wanted to like this, and fully expected to after being spoiled by several excellent Japanese crime novels recently ,but sadly it always promised more than it ultimately delivered.

[Annie Leadley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a complex Scenario about Criminal Activity in Japan . Having been to Japan & seen how every square inch of Land is vital in it's Cities & how much Properties even been they Residential ones cost when our daughter & Son -in-Law have purchased Family Homes plus all red tape & paperwork surrounding those is , it made me understand better where the author was coming from. #NetGalley, #GoodReads, #FB, Instagram, #Amazon.co.uk, # , # , #.

[MaguiWorld · Rating 3 out of 5]

¿Creías que los grandes estafadores solo existen en Wall Street? Tokyo Swindlers nos sumerge en un mundo donde el fraude inmobiliario mueve millones y la verdad es tan resbaladiza como el mercado de bienes raíces en Tokio.

Esta no es una historia sobre justicia o redención. Aquí vemos cómo las grandes corporaciones caen presas de su propia codicia y cómo, en el juego del engaño, la ética es un lujo. A pesar del ritmo ágil y personajes convincentes, el libro divaga sin un rumbo claro, y el final—lejos de ser un clímax emocionante—se siente tan mundano como inevitable.

Si buscas un thriller convencional, quizás no sea tu mejor apuesta. Pero si te interesa una mirada a las sombras de la sociedad japonesa, con un tono cínico y realista, es una muy buena opción.

Muchas gracias Stone Bridge Press por el arc que leí en NetGalley a cambio de una reseña honesta.

[Dorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Contemporary Japanese crime thriller, adapted into a Netflix live action series, Tokyo Swindlers has some amazing narrative, but also some parts that just slow down the story. Overall, I liked this book, based on true events, but is not a true story of real-estate swindling. To achieve this, they assume the identity of people that are in hospice or respite care, roaming the streets until they find a suitable replica of their target. Then the process of identity fraud and transfer are easily done.

Takumi, grieving the loss of his family, becomes involved in a real-estate swindle masterminded by fabled land scammer Harrison Yamanaka. The targeted property is worth $70 million dollars. It will not be easy to replicate the owners.......Takumi has nothing left to lose........its worth a shot.......or two......

[Brian Caster · Rating 3 out of 5]

The scheme itself is quite interesting: swindling money from real estate brokers by pretending to own properties, and taking advantage of Japan's occasionally quirky bureaucratic systems to pull it off. Unfortunately, the schemes in the book are pulled off by cliches, rather than actual characters, which makes it far less interesting. The victims aren't much better, but that might be expected as the author has to get us to root for the villains. Not to be outdone by the other cliches, the policeman is a workaholic on the verge of retirement who just can't let that one case go... but for all that, the book was entertaining enough for a semi-positive review. I won't be recommending it to anyone, or reading the sequels.

[Hikari · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a Japanese Oceans 11, except that it’s land transactions rather than casinos and the victims are corporations. The novel is very ambiguous as to who the reader should root for: will the swindlers manage it? Will the buyers twig that something’s up? Will the police catch the swindlers? The scenes I found most touching were those between Takumi and Nagai the reclusive programmer. A short read and something of a cautionary tale of caveat emptor. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the kind of book that I really do want to love, but I admit to having a lot of trouble getting into it. I see from other reviews that it is a drama and I'm thinking that this may be that rare exception when a story is better on screen than it is on page. However, I appreciate having it and am glad that it is in book form. Enthusiasts will want to immerse in both.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. I hope it does well.

[Ev · Rating 2 out of 5]

While Tokyo Swindlers serves as insight into the prolific nature of land scammers in Japan, a phenomenon relatively unique to the country due to its complex real estate and bureaucratic structure, I found it unfulfilling. The writing style and plot are easy to follow, but the characters remain one-note except our main pair. Outside of Yamanaka, the swindlers felt interchangeable and expendable. Any women represented get a short end of the stick whether we are supposed to like them or not. The misogynistic sightlines combined with skin-crawling sexual depictions were hard to ignore.

I thought Takumi compelling and wish this had dug deeper into his psychological state and conflict with Yamanaka. Ultimately, it lacked a significant emotional or dramatic crux to drive any lasting impression. If you are seeking to expand into Japanese literature, I would start elsewhere.

Thank you to Stone Bridge Press for the e-ARC.

[Ashton Ahart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tokyo swindlers is a high-stakes thriller about a group a land swindlers who work to scam their way to riches. After Takumi, the main character, suffered a severe loss and got fired from his job as a driver he ends up in thr company of the infamous Harrison Yamanaka. Following various perspectives and timelines, Tokyo Swindlers is filled with tension, eerie characters, and intense scenes.

[William Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent caper novel. The plot trots along nicely. The land swindles are carefully explored and explained. Nice meditation on how we decide if something or someone is real. Appropriately ironic and villainish ending. Entertaining.

[RosaPosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fast and furious ride filled with nefarious, shady guys trying to pull off an audacious heist. Loved it. Curious now, after reading this, to see if the show stands up in comparison. Solid, genuine non-fraudulent 4/5 stars.

[thuydle · Rating 3 out of 5]

maybe it was the english translation, but some of these sentences were difficult to read? like there were so many commas...

also it moved kind of slow imo, literally nothing really happens until chapter 5 and there's only 6 chapters 🧍🏻‍♀️

[Alan M · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent heist novel - think 'Heat' meets Tokyo Vice. A ruthless gang sets a property swindle, our cynical cop-nearing-retirement tries to catch them. But is deeper than just a generic crime novel, and the characters and their back stories invite the reader deeper into the world of the book than many others. A fascinating insight into the shady underworld of con artists, this is a rewarding and involving read. There is a Netflix adaptation, which I haven't seen yet, but will be checking it out.

[Lexi · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Elizabeth Bennet · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was nicely done. I ilke Japanese literature and this one started slow but then I was at the age of my seat towards the end. Recommended if the plot sounds interesting to you.

[Samantha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whilst its an intriguing story of a group of scam artist selling land they don't have possession of, there is something missing from the way it is told. I'm not sure if its because the characters are rather one dimensional or the story itself, whilst promising in its idea, just doesn't make for an interesting read.

I received this book from Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short novel that is about to get a Netflix adaptation that focuses on a group of real estate swindlers in Tokyo and the scenes they end up trying to do. Some absolutely wild stuff here. Yes, it's on the shorter end of things, but it's still a neat thriller.