People Who Eat Darkness

A deeply compelling and chilling journey into the dark side of Japan, centred on the tragic case of Lucie Blackman. Richard Lloyd Parry is the Winner of the 2018 Rathbones Folio Prize In the summer of 2000, Jane Steare received the phone call every mother dreads. Her daughter Lucie Blackman - tall, blonde, and twenty-one years old - had stepped into the vastness of a Tokyo summer and disappeared forever. That winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a desolate seaside cave.Her disappearance was mystifying. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? What did her work, as a 'hostess' in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, really involve? And could Lucie's fate be linked to the disappearance of another girl some ten years earlier?Over the course of a decade, Richard Lloyd Parry has travelled to four continents to interview those caught up in the story and been given unprecedented access to Lucie's bitterly divided family to reveal the astonishing truth about Lucie and her fate.

Short-listed for Gordon Burn Prize 2013 (UK)

“" People Who Eat Darkness is an extraordinary, compulsive and brilliant book. The account of the crime, the investigation and the trial -- particularly in its knowledge and understanding of the Japan in which this tragedy took place -- is both insightful and gripping; the attempt to understand Obara is fascinating but never ghoulish; and finally, and most of all, the compassion for Lucie Blackman and her family is very, very moving." -David Peace”

An extraordinary, compulsive and brilliant book...very, very moving -- David Peace
Difficult to put down... impossible to forget -- Minette Walters
A skilful, definitive history of one of the most notorious crimes of the past decade Sunday Times
This is In Cold Blood for our times... Everyone who has ever loved someone and held that life dear should read this stunning book, and shiver -- Chris Cleave
Open-minded and sympathetic, despite being driven half mad by the case, Parry, former Asia correspondent for the Independent and The Times, is the best kind of narrator of a tale that isn't just a murder case but a book that sheds light on Japan, on families, on the media, and on the insidious effects of misogyny -- Blake Morrison Guardian
This is an extraordinary book which stands as far above the 'true crime' label as Paradise Lost does above the category 'verse'... No avenue is left unexplored, no thought is too oblique to be uttered, no psychological puzzle too disturbing to be investigated -- Bel Mooney Daily Mail
A skilful, definitive history of one of the most notorious crimes of the past decade Sunday Times
Richard Lloyd Parry has produced a work not only of page-turning intensity but also of touching sensitivity and deep insight. That he could have created something almost noble from such base material is a minor miracle of literary alchemy. The book is brilliantly written -- David Pilling Financial Times
An extraordinary book, passionately and meticulously told... I read it with my breath held and found I couldn't relax, think or get on with my life until I'd finished it -- Julie Myerson
Parry shows a rare compassion and a refusal to judge -- Jonathan Coe Guardian, Books of the Year

Richard Lloyd Parry is Asia Editor of The Times. He was born in 1969 and was educated at Oxford. He has been visiting Asia for eighteen years and since 1995 has lived in Tokyo as a foreign correspondent, first for the Independent and now for The Times. He has reported from twenty-one countries and several wars, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, North Korea, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Kosovo and Macedonia. His work has also appeared in the London Review of Books and the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of In The Time of Madness, an eyewitness account of the violence that interrupted in Indonesia in the 1990s, and People Who Eat Darkness- The Fate of Lucie Blackman.

'This is an extraordinary book which stands as far above the 'true crime' label as Paradise Lost does above the category 'verse'... No avenue is left unexplored, no thought is too oblique to be uttered, no psychological puzzle too disturbing to be investigated' - Bel Mooney, Daily Mail 'A skilful, definitive history of one of the most notorious crimes of the past decade' - Sunday Times 'Richard Lloyd Parry has produced a work not only of page-turning intensity but also of touching sensitivity and deep insight. That he could have created something almost noble from such base material is a minor miracle of literary alchemy. The book is brilliantly written' - David Pilling, Financial Times 'An extraordinary book, passionately and meticulously told... I read it with my breath held and found I couldn't relax, think or get on with my life until I'd finished it' - Julie Myerson 'Parry shows a rare compassion and a refusal to judge' - Jonathan Coe, Guardian, Books of the Yea r 'A sobering affair... A true crime thriller, sensitively handled and unsparing in its quest for answers' - Megan Walsh, The Times 'An evenhanded investigation of a murder' - New York Times 'At the heart of this extraordinary and brilliant book about the search, and its aftermath, in 2000 for a 21 year old British girl, Lucie Blackman, who disappeared one summer in Tokyo, in one of the darkest stories I've ever read...a truly disturbing but fascinating read.I read it in one horrified gulp' - Carla McKay, Daily Mail 'As mysterious as its title, this extraordinary true crime tale is up there with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood' - Toni & Guy Magazine

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