A Western journalist working for a publication in Tokyo takes on one of the city's most powerful crime bosses.

In 1999 he was hired as a rookie reporter for Yomiuri Shimbun. As a cadet, he describes being taken under the wing of Sekiguchi, an older detective. Adelstein was initially assigned to "tacky" Saitama, and the memoir covers his next 12 years as a staffer for the paper, describing 80-hour work weeks, relationship difficulties, and the interactions between crime reporters and the police. Specific cases involve the search for the killer of Lucie Blackman, and the memoir also details death threats, after he published an expose on Tadamasa Goto. He also uncovered that Saitama Prefecture was altering scientific data on dioxin contamination.