The Night of Baba Yaga

The novel opens with the abduction of a young woman, Shindo—a butch, menswear-wearing, expert fighter—who is taken away by the yakuza, a crime syndicate. After turning several henchmen into minced meat (it’s very Kill Bill), and nearly raped and brutalized herself, she’s given permission to live, providing that she agrees to work as the bodyguard and driver of Shoko, the only child of the gang’s leader. Shoko, who’s around Shindo’s age, is a revelation: doll-like, dressed in strange, old clothes (it’s the early 1980s), a student at a women’s junior college that is more like a finishing school, with courses in French pastries. And while Shindo misses her old life delivering for a florist, she and Shokow slowly begin to hit it off as Shindo ferries her back and forth from school. Shoko’s life, it turns out, is no picnic, including her upcoming marriage to a complete and utter sadist. How the two women manage to escape from this uber-violent world, confront the patriarchy, and create an alternate existence is as thrilling as it is fast paced. This novella was nominated for a 2021 Mystery Writers of Japan Award