Butter

About

Rika is a journalist at a men's magazine — the only woman on staff, treated as a secretary when she's noticed at all. She becomes obsessed with interviewing Manako Kajii, a gourmet cook accused of murdering the wealthy men she fed. Manako refuses all visitors until Rika writes asking for a recipe. The meetings that follow resemble cooking lessons more than journalism — and as Rika begins preparing the dishes Manako describes, something shifts in her body and her appetite. The woman investigating a killer starts to understand her. Inspired by the real "Konkatsu Killer" case, Yuzuki's novel is a razor-sharp exploration of misogyny, desire, and the forbidden pleasure women are taught never to take — in food, in ambition, in their own bodies. Butter is a novel about two women, a murder, and the dangerous discovery that pleasure and power taste the same.