Cheap The Informer (Book) (Akimitsu Takagi, Sadako Mizuguchi) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Informer

Based on a true story, this novel reads like a recast Faust in the environment of 1960s Japanese business that involves stock market fraud and industrial spying. I really like Takagi's style that other reviewers have described as old-fashioned and overly formal. The characters may be rather one-dimensional, but the writer succeeds well in generating an atmosphere of mystery and in evoking the terror of this books main character. Yet, maybe due to my familiarity with Goethe's Faust or due to years of occupational exposure to intrigue in American Biotech industry, the plot was frightfully transparent to me. In despite of the author's talent, his attempts to keep the "informer" out of the spotlight were not spent on me. Actually, I cannot remember a mystery where the identity of the crook was inevitable just 20 pages into the book.

Thus, I again enjoyed Takagi's writing, but think that his choice to recast a real live situation into a novel resulted in a rather tepid mystery.

Enlightening glimpses of Japanese culture in 1965.
Almost 40 years old, this novel has no scenes of violence or sex--or humor! The language and style are very formal, and the characters, virtually all male, are generic, not individualized--not surprising in a culture in which "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." Nearly all the characteristics one associates with the best modern mystery thrillers are absent here, yet Takagi's novel is fascinating and its plot intriguing, both for the inherent complexities and for the light shed on Japanese business and culture in 1965.

When Shigeo Segawa, a failed stocktrader, is offered a job at an outrageous salary, he finds himself working, not surprisingly, as an industrial spy, ferreting secrets from Shichiyo Chemical, a company in which a college friend is a high official. Segawa shows no qualms of conscience, despite the fact that Eiko, the love of his life, is now married to the friend. Manipulating the women in his life, all of whom are regarded throughout the novel as brainless ornaments or conveniences, he also fails, eventually, at his spy tasks, becoming the prime suspect when his friend turns up murdered. When two more deaths further implicate Segawa, Takagi shows his enormous skill at creating red herrings, using the intricacies of corporate Japan and the traditional restraint of police and prosecutors to keep the reader occupied and diverted.

Differences in legal procedures are stunning here. The police abandon the crime scene because "people were showing up to pay respects [to the widow]...and the atmosphere was no longer suitable." Police and prosecutors make appointments to speak to clients' lawyers and wait patiently till they can be seen. The police give details of confessions to people they are interviewing and seem to share information with whoever wants it. Industrial espionage by itself is not a crime. Careful readers may figure out early who is responsible for the murders, but this novel provides unusual glimpses of Japanese culture, enough to keep a curious reader fascinated and involved till the end.

Interesting and enjoyable, but ending left me hanging
I really enjoyed this book until the last few pages or so. It reads kind of like Harushi (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) Murakami throughout most of it - very interesting examination of Japanese society, believable characters with real, every day kinds of issues and problems, etc. But the end had one major disappointment, that being that the reader is left wondering what in the world becomes of one of the key characters in the book. It doesn't really impact the "mystery" aspect of the story, it's just that it left me with a lack of a sense of closure about this one central character. Other than that, I thought it was a great read.