Reporters are annoying. [The Flower Arranger by J.J. Ellis]

A young British journalist making her career in Japan collaborates with a half-Japanese police inspector as they uncover the truth of a flower obsessed serial killer. I said it before and it remains true, this books centered way too much on foreigners and mixed-Japanese in Japan. Way too much. And even disregarding that, the reporter is gonna trope, is gonna report, like no one's business.

I get that the inspector has a crisis of identity due to his mixed heritage and is therefore overcompensating in his Japanese customs, but when you try to hard it shows. I am not disparaging reporters, generally they're great. I'm disparaging the typical media presentation of a reporter, especially a female reporter, and especially, especially a white female reporter. Take Lois Lane. Take Kara Danvers. And take our protagonist here. Something along the lines of "making their way in a man's world" is the general excuse for their callous disregard for the safety of others, their bullheaded stubbornness, and hypocritical diving into the affairs of others. They're plucky and ambitious and will uncover the truth at any cost. And while the fact that they routinely get away with rule breaking is often to be viewed as inherent to intrepid reporting, it's mostly because their young white women. So yeah, I hate this kind of reporter.

The story presented in The Flower Arranger was interesting enough, but parts of it were a bit rushed. The eBook edition I have was 286 pages, but per GoodReads the book is more than 300 pages long. The Flower Arranger by J.J. Ellis was published earlier in September of this year and I don't know when this book was first offered on NetGalley so it's more than possible changes were made to the book. Still, going off of what I read, too much of the story fell into place conveniently. Too many threads were wrapped up in too neat fashions. Tensions were minimal, especially when higher stakes were offered.

The author's debut novel, The Flower Arranger seems to be laying a series involving the inspector-reporter duo. Throughout the book there was a back and forth between Japanese terms and their English equivalents, and throughout an exposition of Japanese history and culture. So I learned a lot and I appreciate that. The story had a solid premise and the execution was fair enough, but I was bored or annoying with a lot of the characters. I'm not eager to recommend it this book, but it wasn't that bad. 3 stars from me.