Death Note- Another Note, the Los Angeles BB Murder Case by Nisioisin

This is not a manga, but a novel, written supposedly by Mihael Keel, aka "M", the successor to L. In it, the author profiles and explains a serial killer case that L was involved with, along with Naomi Misora, who is introduced and dies very quickly in the manga Death Note.

Naomi was a member of the FBI, but because she was a woman, and Asian, she was not highly regarded by the higher-ups in the FBI. And so, when a case went bad, she was laid off on Administrative leave. With nothing to do, she drifted through days in L.A., until she was contacted by L to become his assistant in the case of three people murdered in LA, eventually known as the Beyond Birthday killer or the Wara Ningyo killer, as Japanese Dolls named Wara Ningyo were left behind by the killer at the murder scene.

The three Victims were known as Believe Bridesmaid, Quarter Queen and Backyard Bottomslash (and yes, those are supposedly the real names, and not just pseudonyms assigned by the case investigators). But shortly after Naomi is assigned to the case by L, she meets another investigator, Ryu Ryuzaki, a tall, dark-haired Japanese man who has dark lines under his eyes and seems to live on a diet of sugar and sweet things, like jars of Jam, which he eats with his fingers.

Together the three detectives plumb the mysteries of the case and seek the culprit responsible. But can Naomi Misora, outclassed by both L and Ryu Ryuzaki, hope to have anything to contribute to solving the case? Or is she simply a pawn for L, and a target for the killer?

This book was fairly short, and well plotted, but I really found myself glad it was so small, because if it was any longer, I probably wouldn't have finished it. Mello, the putative author, is at turns arrogant, looking down his nose at the reader, and yet building up L as if he was supposed to have been a God. Both of these things made the book somewhat distasteful to read at times, and by the end I was like "More praise for L's Godlike Intellect... (sigh) brown nose much, Mello?"

The other thing that makes it hard to read is the supposed names of the victims. Yes, they were multiples of B and Q, but honestly! "Believe Bridesmaid"? Who would name their kid that, or have such a last name? Okay, the last name Queen is fine, but Quarter? Why not Quintana or something a bit more believeable? At first, I thought it was a case of "the names were changed to protect the identity of the victims", but no, these were supposedly their real names, by which I could only think that Nisioisin thinks that Americans are idiots when it comes to naming conventions.

Oh yes, and since this book is all about palindromes and things being the same backwards, forwards and mirror-flipped, I noticed that the author's name is also a palindrome, reading the same backwards and forwards (Nisioisin). In short, a good mystery marred by the unique naming styles and alternately arrogant tone and suckupness of the narrator. It comes off like Mello is lecturing people he believes to be idiots about how great L was and using this case as an example. It's rather hard to take, and would have been better told in a more neutral tone.