Here's
a perfect example of a book which doesn't live up to its title; and a book whose
author spends far too much of his allotted space strutting and preening. If
he has half the ego in real life that he has in print, he must be one unsufferable
prick.The book is a digest version taking (presumably) the best bits from a lengthier volume. If this was the best, I don't care to see the rest. The only real revelation this veteran of four decades of police work has to share is a very interesting look at why anyone looking to the Ministry of Justice White Paper for crime statistics in Japan would do just as well to use the report to wipe their ass with. Japan's nationalized bureaucratized policing system ensures that the numbers are fudged from the bottom up to make the individual departments look good. Akagi outlines how this is done in the case of at least one sort of crime. That's in the first chapter of the book. After that, you may as well put it back on the shelf since he has little else more earthshaking than revealing that traffic tickets sometimes get fixed and that there are too many cops assigned to headquarters. Oh, and the promotion system is corrupt and rigged. Give this one a pass.