All She Was Worth

All She Was Worth is a crime novel by Miyuki Miyabe originally published under the Japanese title "Kasha" (Japanese: 火車), an allusion to the mythical Shinto creature said to devour dead bodies. 1992. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Shunsuke Honma, on leave due to an incident on the job, is hired by his nephew, banker Jun Kurisaka, to track down his fiancée, whom he knows by the name of Shoko Sekine and who disappeared from his life after he d... more

All She Was Worth is a crime novel by Miyuki Miyabe originally published under the Japanese title "Kasha" (Japanese: 火車), an allusion to the mythical Shinto creature said to devour dead bodies. 1992. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Detective Shunsuke Honma, on leave due to an incident on the job, is hired by his nephew, banker Jun Kurisaka, to track down his fiancée, whom he knows by the name of Shoko Sekine and who disappeared from his life after he discovered her credit history was tainted by bankruptcy. As Honma investigates her circumstances, he finds that the name "Shoko Sekine" actually belongs to someone else other than Jun's fiancée - and that the latter may have murdered the former to achieve this... As Honma navigates the country for clues, he finds that the credit-based economy in Japan, coupled with the country's own system for family identification, have undesirable side effects on ordinary people's lives. less