[.ca] Rising Sun (ISBN 0345380371)

Special services liaison:
To the Japanese business is war by other means. What is the Nakamoto murder and 12 years after this book's writing can it still hold a reader's attention? The answer is yes. Special services is a diplomatic detail in the LAPD. A homocide is reported at the Nakamoto Tower. A caucasian woman has died. Peter J. Smith has been assigned to the Special Services detail for the past six months. An experienced officer, John Connor, tells Smith that a foreigner can never master the etiquette of bowing. The ninety seven floor building had been constructed from prefab units from Nagasaki. In the 1970's 150,000 Japanese students a year were studying in America while 200 U.S. students were studying in Japan. Peter Smith is dealing with Mr. Ishiguro. A very important business reception is taking place and Mr. Ishiguro does not want his guests to be bothered by any aspects of the investigation whatsoever. Every homocide scene has energy. The author states that Japanese people are sensitive to context and behave appropriately under the circumstances. There is a shadow world in New York and Los Angeles and other American cities available only to the Japanese. Two men had already searched the victim's apartment. In Japan every criminal is caught. There is a ninety nine per cent conviction rate. In the U.S. it is seventeen per cent. A crime occurred with the expectation it would not be solved. In Japan scandal is the most common way of revising the pecking order. Officer Smith would like to find a house suitable for raising his daughter but has found that the real estate prices are beyond his means. National cultures clashing create fragility in understanding as does the clash of business cultures. Out of the blue it would seem the two police officers are the subjects of bribery attempts by the Japanese. The solution of the crime is elaborate and laid out with care. All in all the story is very engrossing.

Rising Sun is a miss:
Michael Crichton's books are hit or miss. Rising Sun is a miss. I think it's supposed to be taking place during the mid to late 1980s when there was an influx of Japanese business ventures in the United States -- especially in California. I remember the xenophobic response from some people of my parents age and especially of people my grandparents age (not everyone, of course). As a teenager, I was surprised, confused and later embarrassed by the reactions of my relatives. Rising Sun is clearly playing into those sentiments and frankly I don't like it. Both cultures, American and Japanese in this book are reduced to stereotypal representations making for a boring, predicatable and insulting read.

Not as good as the movie:
I never thought I would say that, especially with a Crichton novel, but this one was really not as good as the movie. The plot wasn't as deep, the characters weren't as developed, the suspense wasn't as great. Perhaps I am just a bit off-set by the lack of science fiction, a staple in most of his novels. Perhaps I just found this story _too_ believable, and the characters _too_ real. In any regard, it was a great book, but not one of his best.

Fantastic !!!:
Great read. we get a good peak at japanese customs and the financial tech rivaly betwen the US and the Japs. Good fun.And as always MC books high on tech this time the centre piece is video survellience cameras and the gizmos

A disappointment:
Instead of being an engaging novel, Rising Sun was a political platform from which to vent about the disintegration of the American economy at the hands of the Japanese. In an attempt to make this long-winded speech into a ficticious "story", the author offers us faded characters, and dialouge that is unimaginative, listless, and after a while, irritating. The murder of the young Japanese woman...the event from which the novel supposedly emerged, is apparently still a mystery..an occurance with no meaning, no relevance, and no motivation. This was a disasterous divergence from the author's usual genre.