Miyuki Miyabe
When a middle-aged company employee is found dead, police soon discover that he frequented where he was the “dad” of an online fantasy family. When the police find evidence that this second family had begun to meet offline as well, the man’s real-life daughter complains of being stalked. Where lies the motive for the murder – on- or offline? Bringing the “shadow family” back together for one last time might be the only way to solve the crime.
The book starts in the middle of the police investigation, and what happened before is told in flashbacks. The novel shows the boundaries between what’s real and what’s fake, and how nowadays, where everybody switches between real life and online persona seamlessly several times a day, the boundaries are less defined than ever.
Miyuki Miyabe was born in Tokyo in 1960 and started writing novels at the age of 23. In 1984, while working at a law office, she began to take writing classes and subsequently made her debut in 1987 with ‘Our Neighbour is a Criminal’, which won several prizes. She writes mysteries and historical fiction, among other genres, and her books were the basis for a number of films.
If you’re in for a psychological murder mystery with a twist that makes you question the whole thing at the end, get this book from amazon.