Six Four is different. It's much longer than any similar novel you're likely to find. 635 pages, in fact, impressively bound in a tall hardcover. There's also an overwhelming amount of detail about the bureaucracy of Japanese police. Underneath all that it's an interesting and detailed account of police work in Japan, with its unique challenges. Six Four takes place in 2002, or Heisei 14 in the Japanese dating system, in which the era changes when an emperor dies and a new one is crowned. The novel takes place in D-Prefecture , a fictional region four hours away from Tokyo, struggling to maintain independence from the National Police Agency. Police Superintendent Yoshinobu Mikami has been floundering. He's been transferred to Administrative Affairs to work as press director. Transfers like this occur in every Japanese workplace once a year - for most it's just a step in their career, but some transfers are personal, intended to move the individual into a dead-end role where they either quit or fail. On top of him from both the press and from within the police force, Mikami also has to deal with the loss of this teenage daughter, who disappeared recently, and a kidnapping that bears a striking resemblance to an unsolved crime committed 14 years earlier