Last Winter We Parted by Fuminori Nakamura

Last Winter We Parted - Fuminori Nakamura

The basic story is very much like In Cold Blood. A writer is sent to interview a convicted killer. The killer is a photographer who has been found guilty of burning two women to death. There is no doubt that he is guilty. He stood there and photographed the women as they burned. But the more time the writer spends on the story, the more he starts to question this. Did the photographer really kill these women? Or is there a important piece of information missing? A piece that could change everything?

 

 

I used to read a lot of mysteries as a older teen/young adult. I don't remember why I started shying away from the genre, but it probably had something to do with predictability. Just recently I've started reading them again, and this was a great "jumping back into a genre". The story full of twist and turns and predictability is nowhere in sight. I didn't love it, but I didn't have it either. The story is told from multiple POVs. You're not always told what POV you're reading. Add that to the fact that a few of the characters have very similar names, and you have a recipe for extreme confusion in parts. Something that should have really bothered me but didn't, was the fact that none of the characters are likable. They're all awful, despicable people. I think the reason it worked for me was because the author didn't try to hide how awful they were. He didn't try to say "yeah, that was a really fucked up thing to do, BUT they meant well". He let them be exactly who they were.

 

 

I would read anther title by the author.