Genre Mystery
Age Rating For Older Teens
Price $17.99

There's a Serial Killer Loose in Los Angeles and the local authorities need help fast. For some reason the killer has been leaving a string of maddeningly arcane clues at each crime scene. Each of these clues, it seems, is an indecipherable roadmap to the next murder.

Onto the scene comes L, the mysterious super-sleuth. Despite his peculiar working habits--he's never shown his face in public, for example--he's the most decorated detective in the world and has never tackled a cased he hasn't been able to crack.

But this time he needs help.

Enlisting the services of an FBI agent named Naomi Misora, L starts snooping around the City of Angels. It soon becomes apparent that the killing spree is a psychotic riddle designed specifically to engage L in a battle of wits. Stuck in the middle between killer and investigator, it's up to Misora to navigate both the dead bodies and the egos to solve the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.

Cashing in on the widely-successful Death Note franchise is this novel. The first thing that's evident is that it has high production values, from a sturdy cover, an imaginative book jacket, a bookmark, and thick paper stock. If you're the type that's intimidated by novels, Death Note Another Note isn't a threat to you. Between the simple language and 176 pages of text, time will fly quickly as you read through this.

Now the question I'm sure Death Note fans are asking is what is this book about. Suffice to say, it's a prequel novel in the sense that it deals with a case of L prior to the events in the manga. The real protagonist however is Naomi Misora, a character you might recognize from the second volume of the series. In many ways however this is also a sequel to the series because it's told from a perspective that's post-Death Note. The text is best described as functional as the narrator (another familiar character from the series but I'll save the details for who this actual person is for the people who read the book--and don't worry, it's no mystery as he reveals himself early on) is sparse and simply gives us the necessary series of events in a stream-of-consciousness language. For the most part, Nisiosin manages to incorporate all the elements that makes Death Note Death Note and it's an asset if you're familiar with the cosmology (I'm recommending you read this after you've read the manga, not before). Was I engrossed and "tricked" by the text? You bet it and this makes for interesting Death Note reading.
 
Now that I've stated the reasons why to get this novel, here's the reasons why you shouldn't. The first is the $17.99 price tag. That easily purchases two ordinary volumes of Viz manga and manga this book isn't. Even as a fiction reader, paying that much for a slim book and not necessarily of "literary" quality is dubious. For another, if you're a fan of L, I wouldn't really call this an L book more than a Naomi Misora book so be warned of that ahead of time. Having said all of that, if you're like me and craving for more Death Note material, this is probably your best bet without being redundant. Nisiosin does justice in expanding the cosmology of the series and was an enjoyable read.

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