Product Description

During the grand opening celebration of the new American headquarters of an immense Japanese conglomerate, the dead body of a beautiful woman is found. The investigation begins, and immediately becomes a headlong chase through a twisting maze of industrial intrigue and a violent business battle that takes no prisoners.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114419 in Books
• Published on: 1992-11-23
• Released on: 1992-11-23
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 416 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A young American model is murdered in the corporate boardroom of Los Angeles's Nakomoto Tower on the new skyscraper's gala opening night. Murdered, that is, unless she was strangled while enjoying sadomasochistic sex that went too far. Nakomoto, a Japanese electronics giant, tries to hush up the embarrassing incident, setting in motion a murder investigation that serves Crichton ( Jurassic Park ) as the platform for a clever, tough-talking harangue on the dangers of Japanese economic competition and influence-peddling in the U.S. Divorced LAPD lieutenant Peter Smith, who has custody of his two-year-old daughter, and hard-boiled detective John Connor, who says things like "For a Japanese, consistent behavior is not possible," pursue the killer in a winding plot involving Japan's attempt to gain control of the U.S. computer industry. Although Crichton's didactic aims are often at cross-purposes with his storytelling, his entertaining, well-researched thriller cannot be easily dismissed as Japan-bashing because it raises important questions about that country's adversarial trade strategy and our inadequate response to it. He also provides a fascinating perspective on how he thinks the Japanese view Americans--as illiterate, childish, lazy people obsessed with TV, violence and aggressive litigation. 225,000 first printing; BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-- The celebrity-studded opening of a huge Japanese office building is marred by the murder of a beautiful American woman. Lt. Peter Smith is called in to investigate and is requested to bring along John Connor, an expert on Japanese culture and fluent in the language. So begins a riveting tale that combines suspense, technology, and a full-scale economic battle for survival. YAs will have no problem following the complex corporate business schemes described by Crichton, whose loyalties are obviously with America. Readers who fear that the Japanese are taking over the U. S. economy will not be reassured.
- Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Secondary School, Burke, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
The Yellow Menace returns in Crichton's shocking, didactic, enormously clever new mystery-thriller--only now he wears a three- piece suit and aims to dominate America through force of finance, not arms. ``The Japanese can be tough,'' says one character here. ``They say `business is war,' and they mean it.'' How much they mean it Lt. Peter J. Smith, LAPD, learns when he's assigned to the murder of an American call-girl at the gala opening of the L.A. high-rise headquarters of the Japanese conglomerate Nakamoto. There, Smith butts heads with men whose alien mannerisms he can't interpret and who insist on their own ``private inquiry.'' Fortunately, he's joined by legendary Japan-savvy cop John Connor, the real hero here, a Holmes to narrator Smith's Watson. At the crime scene and thereafter, Connor, whose love/hate for the Japanese stems from years lived in their land, interprets Japanese ways to Smith: ``Control your gestures. Keep your hands at your sides. The Japanese find big arm movements threatening...'' Connor's commentary is always fascinating but, as the serpentine case coils on, numerous instances of Japanese financial dirty dealing are cited by characters who disparage the Japanese sufficiently (``The Japanese don't believe in fair trade at all''; ``Japanese corporations in America...think they're surrounded by savages'') to bathe Smith--and the novel--in xenophobic paranoia: It's not by chance that the only likable Japanese here is a crippled beauty who fled to America because ``to the Japanese, deformity is shameful.'' Crichton's coup is to preach within a breathtakingly supple plot hinging on doctored Nakamoto security videotapes that caught the killer at work, the deciphering of which takes place in lab-set scenes as technologically riveting as the best in Jurassic Park. And as suspenseful--for as Smith closes in on the killer and the huge-money stakes behind the crime, Nakamoto agents threaten his family, his career, and his life. Brilliantly calculated Japan-bashing that's bound, for better or for worse, to attract controversy and a huge readership. (Book- of-the-Month Dual Selection for Spring) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Dark Foreshadowing of Present Times
During current times when the whole economic structure of our country is in collapse and when presidential candidates speak of the middle class like it's an endangered species, one should read or perhaps reread this book. It sets a murder mystery in a time when the Japanese were buying up many American businesses although the Japanese were not alone in doing this (Germans, British, etc, etc). They were taking their newly acquired companies and often reincorporating them in places like Luxembourg that could provide large tax advantages (i.e. less tax income for the US). The book suggests that these practices weakened the economic spine of this country. The murder mystery itself is set against some rather interesting cultural aspects that lend some interesting qualities.

Rising Sun is a miss
Michael Crichton's books are hit or miss. Rising Sun is a miss. I think it's supposed to be taking place during the mid to late 1980s when there was an influx of Japanese business ventures in the United States -- especially in California. I remember the xenophobic response from some people of my parents age and especially of people my grandparents age (not everyone, of course). As a teenager, I was surprised, confused and later embarrassed by the reactions of my relatives.

Rising Sun is clearly playing into those sentiments and frankly I don't like it. Both cultures, American and Japanese in this book are reduced to stereotypal representations making for a boring, predicatable and insulting read.

A disappointment
Instead of being an engaging novel, Rising Sun was a political platform from which to vent about the disintegration of the American economy at the hands of the Japanese. In an attempt to make this long-winded speech into a ficticious "story", the author offers us faded characters, and dialouge that is unimaginative, listless, and after a while, irritating.

The murder of the young Japanese woman...the event from which the novel supposedly emerged, is apparently still a mystery..an occurance with no meaning, no relevance, and no motivation. This was a disasterous divergence from the author's usual genre.