Rising Sun

Rising Sun easily stood out from the rest of the books by Michael Crichton that I have read so far. The story is narrated by Peter Smith, a LAPD liason for Japanese, who is called in when an escort’s murder is discovered at the grand opening of a new Japanese corporation skyscraper in LA. Smith is a greenhorn, so is asked to pull in a Japanese expert John Connor to the case. 1992 is from an era when Japanese mega corporations dominated the US. And so is the fictional Nakamoto Corporation of this story, whose executive Ishiguri tries all sorts of levers to delay, deceive and defuse the attention from this murder. The surveillance tapes are found after much delay and found to be copied or fabricated in some way. The murder also seems to be connected to the takeover of a US semiconductor company MicroCon by Nakamoto. As the Japanese tighten the noose around Smith and Connor, the duo try to figure out the true murderer within 2 days.

The reason this books stands out for Crichton is that I have never seen him this preachy before! Every single page of this book has Connor educating the naive Smith about the social and corporate culture of the Japanese and scaring him about Japan’s huge investments in the US, their takeover of the world’s manufacturing industry, and their lobbying power among US politicians. Reading this book in 2024, the current fear of China taking over the US, is strikingly eerie. I guess Japan must have seemed like it was about to overtake the US in 1992 for Crichton to have written a novel just to bring light to this. The murder mystery is actually good, with enough intrigue and use of realistic technology for investigation. If Crichton had not overloaded the book with fear of the Japanese and Connon-Smith duo had been more well balanced, this would have been an even better read.

Rating: 4/5