Crossfire by Miyuki Miyabe
By Zack Davisson
Superpowers are a risky gamble. For every cool power – flight, x-ray vision, invulnerability – you get a clutch of utterly wack ones: who really wants to be Porcupine Man, have a death touch or be able to burn people alive? Junko Aoki gets the latter. A young and beautiful pyrokinetic, she is capable of unleashing devastating heat attacks using only her mind. Sure, she'd like to be a hero, saving people from danger, but her powers just don't work that way. Instead she is a warrior, a weapon, a scourge against the inhuman scum ravaging modern Japan. Criminals rape girls, kill people, and they get away with it... well, they get away from the law, but not from Junko.
Her trail of inexplicably burned bodies eventually draws the attentions of Chikako Ishizu, a middle-aged detective in the arson department. Chikako is Junko's opposite, an unexceptional woman of average abilities who owes her position to affirmative action rather than any great personal skills. Married with children, she muddles her way through a murky world the best she can, well aware of the power that others wield over her. Her investigation forces her to leave her accepted reality behind, and enter a shadow world she never imagined existed. Behind it all, manipulating both her and Junko, is a group called The Guardians, a powerful association dedicated to delivering justice where the courts have failed. And Junko is not the only super-powered being at their disposal.
Crossfire is Miyuki Miyabe's third book to get translated into English, and it's a departure from her previous, grounded-in-reality cop thrillers like All She was Worth and Shadow Family. Regardless of genre, however, Miyabe's strength is her characters – specifically her women, who come alive and bring an honesty to fantastic circumstances. Her two female protagonists could not be more different, and that is where the drama lives. Junko is cold, having sealed away her emotions in order to control her explosive power. Chikako is warm, wanting to do her duty and help people without being swallowed up by things beyond her power. Miyabe maintains the appropriate voices and tones as she switches between the characters, making for a compelling read. Crossfire is no masterpiece, but it's a lot of fun, a fast-paced thriller with plenty of twists to keep the reader's blood pumping, eager to see what happens next.
Image Credit:
© 1998 by Miyabe Miyuki, English translation 2005 by Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi and Anna Husson Isozaki, Published by Kodansha International Ltd.
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