High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic thirteen year-old drop-out with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk. Another man caught in the web of this mayhem.

Combining this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic prose it is an assault on all the senses, a murder mystery that is also philosophical speculation, and a dark fable of advanced capitalism.