PEOPLE WHO EAT DARKNESS: The Fate of Lucie Blackman, by Richard Lloyd Parry. Jonathan Cape, 2011, 404 pp., £17.99 (hardcover)

This July 1 will mark 11 years since former British Airways stewardess Lucie Blackman agreed to accompany a customer at the Roppongi club where she had been working as a hostess for dohan, by which female staff dated customers in addition to their regular duties.

As Richard Lloyd Parry notes in this meticulously chronicled account, that was the last time her friends saw her alive. After a seven-month search, police found Blackman's dismembered corpse buried under a seaside cliff on the Miura Peninsula. Due to the body's prolonged exposure to the elements, the coroner failed to establish a conclusive cause of death. But the sole suspect in her disappearance — a reclusive 48-year-old businessman named Joji Obara who admitted having been with her that day — was apprehended on suspicion of her murder.

In a search of Obara's home in Denen-Chofu and other locations, police reportedly found a cache of incriminating evidence, including untraceable mobile phones, knock-out drugs and videos that appeared to show him having sex with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of unconscious women.