Smoke, Soil, or Sacrifices

煙か土か食い物

• by Maijo Otaro
• published by Kodansha

A brilliant ER surgeon gets a call telling him his mother's in the hospital, so he buys a Hanson album and hops a flight back home to Fukui, the Dakota of Japan. His mother was hit over the head by a crazy man, who is concocting some ludicrous puzzle, like something out of a cheap third rate mystery novel, and the surgeon's half-cocked quest to kick the "motherfucker's ass" (lots of English swearing riddled through the book) unearths a load of demons from his own family history. Probably the most complete of Majio's books, and also the least fun; the sort of book where you had to put it down and wait till you cool off a bit for fear of tearing pages out. Or maybe I just get worked up when I read.