The Master Key

My Rating:

☆☆☆

I saw this described by another Goodreads reviewer as “less a thriller than a multiple arc character study”, which I’d wholeheartedly agree with. Much less a mystery, too, and more an examination of events in the various characters’ lives as they relate to the stolen Master Key. Characters are mentioned as background names in one chapter, only to become the POV character and main focus of the next. I wish I had created a list of the characters as they were introduced, along with their histories and other memorable features, because I often found myself recognizing a name had been mentioned earlier but needing to flip back to remember who she was, exactly.

I also saw this one described as a Japanese Noir, though only after having read it, so I did not go into it imagining it as such. While the book didn’t have that overt Noir feeling that Togawa’s The Lady Killer or Natsuo Kirino’s Out did, in retrospect I suppose it did have some of the usual tropes - crime, a present haunted by the past - but without that sense of atmosphere I associate with Noir, it didn’t much feel like one to me. 

Overall, I think I prefer this novel, her debut, over The Lady Killer.