Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S.

But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. (N.B.: The Japanese film of Out premiered in New York in late May.)Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Dramatic as the plot is, however, it’s the penetration of Kirino’s insight into her characters and their capacity to keep surprising each other that linger longest in this grimly satisfying tale.Ĭrime and Punishment meets A Simple Plan-yet in the end Kirino manages her banal heroines’ descent into hell like no one you’ve ever read before. But the women have made far more dangerous enemies, from an aspiring rapist in their factory to a nightclub owner their handiwork has inadvertently put out of business, and what happens to them unfolds in a series of shocks it would be unfair to reveal. Their unlikely strategy, whose every banal discussion and grisly procedure is presented in pitiless detail, doesn’t entirely succeed in fooling the police.

Soon all four friends know about the murder, and they all band together to conceal it from the authorities. One night one of the team strangles her abusive husband and, remorseless but fearful of exposure, calls on Masako for help.

Night after night they take turns dishing rice into containers, smoothing it out, placing pieces of meat or fish on top, and covering it with sauce before returning home in dull despair to their tiny apartments, indifferent mates, unresponsive children, and mounting debts. Masako Katori works with three friends making box lunches on a night-shift assembly line. Horrifying violence lurks a hairsbreadth beneath the surface of drab modern Tokyo in veteran Kirino’s award-winning English-language debut.

Out natsuo