The Floating Girl

The Floating Girl
By Sujata Massey
Avon Books, 2000. 374 pages. Mystery.

Rei (pronounced Ray) Shimura, is a Japanese-American woman living in Tokyo trying to make it as an antiques dealer. To make a little extra money on the side she has been writing articles about antiques hunting for the Gaijin Times, a local magazine written in English for foreigners. This is the last person you would expect to end up doing investigative journalism into the death of an amateur manga (comic) writer, and yet Rei finds herself unable to stop her inquiries even when her own life is threatened.

I enjoyed the first half of this book much more than the second half. The author includes in her work a lot of information about Japan; its culture, people, and their obsession with manga. I didn’t care enough about Rei’s search to find clues to why the writer of a manga story was dead and the illustrator was missing. I also felt that the ending was a big let-down, having expected a far more sinister motive. I would, however, say that this was a very easy book to get pulled into. Sometimes it takes a while to get drawn into a story, but this one pulled me in from page one.

AJ