Out

I don't read many crime thrillers, but Out, by Natsuo Kirino, is a cool, creepy walk on the dark side. The novel, translated from Japanese, centers on four women struggling to make ends meet while working at a boxed lunch factory. In Kirino's novel, Japanese society is depressingly sexist -- women are denigrated as a matter of course by both by their families and their employers. Nevertheless, the female characters are smart, cynical, manipulative and eager to carve out their own destinies. When one of the women kills her philandering husband for gambling away their life's savings, her co-workers come together to help her get rid of the evidence. That cover-up leads their entanglement with Japan's brutal underground criminal world.
The book has several scenes of startling, disturbing violence, much like a Quentin Tarantino movie. The dismemberment of a dead body is particularly graphic.