If you like true crime books, this may be the book of the year.

Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan tells the tale of American reporter Jake Adelstein’s incredible 15 year career crime reporting in Toyko.

The book was released last month. Check out the 2008 story from the Washington Post that summarizes Edelstein’s career and why he is afraid for his life. The Mob is Big in Japan

“I have spent most of the past 15 years in the dark side of the rising sun. Until three years ago, I was a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, and covered a roster of characters that included serial killers who doubled as pet breeders, child pornographers who abducted junior high-school girls, and the John Gotti of Japan.”

“I came to Japan in 1988 at age 19, spent most of college living in a Zen Buddhist temple, and then became the first U.S. citizen hired as a regular staff writer for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. If you know anything about Japan, you’ll realize how bizarre this is — a gaijin, or foreigner, covering Japanese cops. When I started the beat in the early 1990s, I knew nothing about the yakuza, a.k.a. the Japanese mafia. But following their prostitution rings and extortion rackets became my life.”