Rising Sun - Hardcover

Crichton, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0394589424 ISBN 13: 9780394589428

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992

Synopsis

During the grand opening celebration of the new American headquarters of an immense Japanese conglomerate, the dead body of a beautiful woman is found. The investigation begins, and immediately becomes a headlong chase through a twisting maze of industrial intrigue and a violent business battle that takes no prisoners.


From the Paperback edition.

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Reviews

YA-- The celebrity-studded opening of a huge Japanese office building is marred by the murder of a beautiful American woman. Lt. Peter Smith is called in to investigate and is requested to bring along John Connor, an expert on Japanese culture and fluent in the language. So begins a riveting tale that combines suspense, technology, and a full-scale economic battle for survival. YAs will have no problem following the complex corporate business schemes described by Crichton, whose loyalties are obviously with America. Readers who fear that the Japanese are taking over the U. S. economy will not be reassured.
- Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Secondary School, Burke, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A young American model is murdered in the corporate boardroom of Los Angeles's Nakomoto Tower on the new skyscraper's gala opening night. Murdered, that is, unless she was strangled while enjoying sadomasochistic sex that went too far. Nakomoto, a Japanese electronics giant, tries to hush up the embarrassing incident, setting in motion a murder investigation that serves Crichton ( Jurassic Park ) as the platform for a clever, tough-talking harangue on the dangers of Japanese economic competition and influence-peddling in the U.S. Divorced LAPD lieutenant Peter Smith, who has custody of his two-year-old daughter, and hard-boiled detective John Connor, who says things like "For a Japanese, consistent behavior is not possible," pursue the killer in a winding plot involving Japan's attempt to gain control of the U.S. computer industry. Although Crichton's didactic aims are often at cross-purposes with his storytelling, his entertaining, well-researched thriller cannot be easily dismissed as Japan-bashing because it raises important questions about that country's adversarial trade strategy and our inadequate response to it. He also provides a fascinating perspective on how he thinks the Japanese view Americans--as illiterate, childish, lazy people obsessed with TV, violence and aggressive litigation. 225,000 first printing; BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Yellow Menace returns in Crichton's shocking, didactic, enormously clever new mystery-thriller--only now he wears a three- piece suit and aims to dominate America through force of finance, not arms. ``The Japanese can be tough,'' says one character here. ``They say `business is war,' and they mean it.'' How much they mean it Lt. Peter J. Smith, LAPD, learns when he's assigned to the murder of an American call-girl at the gala opening of the L.A. high-rise headquarters of the Japanese conglomerate Nakamoto. There, Smith butts heads with men whose alien mannerisms he can't interpret and who insist on their own ``private inquiry.'' Fortunately, he's joined by legendary Japan-savvy cop John Connor, the real hero here, a Holmes to narrator Smith's Watson. At the crime scene and thereafter, Connor, whose love/hate for the Japanese stems from years lived in their land, interprets Japanese ways to Smith: ``Control your gestures. Keep your hands at your sides. The Japanese find big arm movements threatening...'' Connor's commentary is always fascinating but, as the serpentine case coils on, numerous instances of Japanese financial dirty dealing are cited by characters who disparage the Japanese sufficiently (``The Japanese don't believe in fair trade at all''; ``Japanese corporations in America...think they're surrounded by savages'') to bathe Smith--and the novel--in xenophobic paranoia: It's not by chance that the only likable Japanese here is a crippled beauty who fled to America because ``to the Japanese, deformity is shameful.'' Crichton's coup is to preach within a breathtakingly supple plot hinging on doctored Nakamoto security videotapes that caught the killer at work, the deciphering of which takes place in lab-set scenes as technologically riveting as the best in Jurassic Park. And as suspenseful--for as Smith closes in on the killer and the huge-money stakes behind the crime, Nakamoto agents threaten his family, his career, and his life. Brilliantly calculated Japan-bashing that's bound, for better or for worse, to attract controversy and a huge readership. (Book- of-the-Month Dual Selection for Spring) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394589424
• ISBN 13: 9780394589428
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 355