The Pachinko Girl

By: Vann Chow

Narrated by: Greg Young

An unforgettable, breathless debut fiction by author Vann Chow, The Pachinko Girl is the winning selection of an international book award online with over 140,000 submissions. While the book appears to be a murder mystery, the author explores and exposes a slew of human rights issues such as gender inequality, hyper-sexualization of teens, homosexual discrimination, racial discrimination, and workplace bullying among others in Japan through the eyes of a foreigner with his friends from different walks of lives and professions in her seminal debut fiction series.

Synopsis: An American businessman who lingered in Pachinko parlor every night in his lonely life as a foreigner in the city of Tokyo met Misa, a young Japanese hostess that worked at a the parlor by chance. Knowing her personal woes, he gave her his winning as an exchange for Japanese lessons. That large sum of money incriminated them to false accuse of sex trade. Meanwhile, an ex-adult film producer investigated the death of a certain foreign producer who happened to have filmed Misa in his legendary work, in which she was seemingly strangled to death. Was Misa the murderer?

©2015 Vann Chow (P)2019 Vann Chow

Pachinko Girl

"The Pachinko Girl" is a crime story with some unpleasant scenes and mature subject matter. It is mostly a story in the Japanese business world with some American characters and many Japanese characters. A major Japanese character is young and female. A major to main character is a middle-aged American businessman, Smith, who is a quirky, kind of amusing and pretty honorable character. He cannot help but get caught up in some of the troubles. There are many characters and the reader does a nice job of doing characterizations of each of the characters. The story often comes off as a kind of charming interplay between characters but it is crime story.The reader also does a nice job of doing the Japanese and non-Japanese characters. He also does a nice job of reading Japanese words clearly.

Very entertaining ..

The book was much fun to listen to - a good story with twists and turns that gives one an idea about life in Japan. It was thrilling from beginning to end and Greg Young has a nice voice I think that puts you right into the story in no time. Recommended.

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review."