"This second half of Lady Joker, by Kaoru Takamura, the Grand Dame of Japanese crime fiction, concludes a breathtaking saga of subterfuge, betrayal, and revenge gone wrong. Inspired by the real-life Glico-Morinaga kidnapping, an unsolved case that terrorized Japan for two years, Lady Joker reimagines the circumstances of this watershed episode in modern Japanese history and brings into riveting focus the lives and motivations of the victims, the perpetrators, the heroes, and the villains. As the shady networks linking corporations to syndicates are brought to light, the stakes rise, and some of the investigators, journalists, and other professionals fighting to manage this crisis will lose everything. Some even their lives. Will the culprits ever be brought to justice? More importantly - what is justice in a capitalist society, where a price can be placed on human life?" -- Jacket flap.