I had high expectations going into this! I'm only familiar with Ryū Murakami's work from the horror movie "Audition" which was adapted from his novel of the same name, and I love that movie. The book I'm yet to read, but I was excited for In the Miso Soup. Nonetheless, I had a great time reading this! 

It starts off with great detail on the neon nighttime life in Tokyo for people looking for sex, having a great time in sex clubs and that kind of thing, and the mystery surrounding Frank was interesting. I liked Kenji a lot too, his head was screwed on right. However while I did enjoy the story, surrounding the death of a young girl, it became quite predictable on who the killer was. But I appreciated the direction the book went that wasn't the familiar shocking twist. As a horror fan, I liked how depraved gory things had gotten. 

The book attempts to humanise a killer with a tragic background. Dealing with things most of us "normal" people deal with our whole lives, and asks us to look inside the heart of a killer and at least try to understand. Maybe not sympathise, but at least understand. It doesn't reach heights I hoped it would, it's definitely got a stronger first half before the obvious became apparent. But overall this was a very great read that's right up my street in many ways. Makes me want to check out more of Ryū Murakami's work or Japanese fiction in general.