"A masterpiece of writing this surely is, but it is more than thatit is a committed, compassionate, courageous act of journalism that changes the way we think. Everyone who has ever loved someone and held that life dear should read this stunning book, and shiver." Chris Cleave, author of Little Beeand Incendiary Lucie Blackmana tall, blond, twentyone-year-oldstepped out into the vastness of Tokyo in the summer of 2000 and disappeared. The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. The seven months in between had seen a massive search for the missing girl, involving Japanese policemen, British private detectives, and Lucie's desperate but bitterly divided parents. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult or snatched by human traffickers? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? And what did her work as a hostess in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo really involve? Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, had followed the case since Lucie's disappearance. Over the course of a decade, as the rest of the world forgot but the trial dragged on, he traveled to four continents to interview those connected with the story, assiduously followed the court proceedings, and won unique access to the Japanese detectives who investigated the case. Ultimately he earned the respect of the victim's family, and delved deep into the mind and background of the man accused of the crime: Joji Obara, described by the judge as "unprecedented and extremely evil." The result is "a big, ambitious true-crime book in the tradition of Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Songand Truman Capote's In Cold Blood"( Esquire).