Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Suzuki, a former teacher seeking revenge for the death of his wife in a hit and run accident, joins a criminal organisation, ‘Fräulein,’ involved in drugs, organ harvesting and general nastiness. The organisation is run by the father of the man responsible for his wife’s death. Suzuki might have been a good maths teacher but he is not a very good criminal.
‘Cicada’ - an assassin, really good with knives. (Insects, of various kinds, are a leitmotif).
‘Whale’ - another assassin, a very large, tall man, able to convince his victims to write their own suicide note, and then hang themselves or ‘fly’ i.e. jump out of a window. Haunted by the ghosts of his victims. Ghosts, of various kinds, feature heavily.
‘The Pusher’ – a third assassin, whose speciality is pushing his victims in front of fast moving objects, trains, cars and the like.
These are the ‘Three Assassins.’ In fact there is another, ‘The Hornet.’ Mythical perhaps! In addition to the above area group called ‘The Performers.’ These diverse characters are a troupe of characters, apparently for hire, to stage a background for abductions, fraud etc.
When the son of the ‘Fräulein’ boss is pushed into the path of a car, the lives and destinies of Suzuki and the three assassins begin to intersect in surprising, unforeseen and sometimes downright farcical ways.
This is a very odd book. It is also compulsive reading. There may be heroes, there are certainly villains. There is rather a lot of death. It is, in turn, a crime thriller, ghost story, philosophical musing on the state of modern human (Japanese) politics and society and a semi- (a)moralistic fable.
The book is largely set in a Tokyo with which most of us will only be familiar, having watched films set in the Japanese capital. It certainly provides local colour, a sense of almost Swiftian dislocation and of an insect colony, from the number and proximity of its inhabitants. It is also a great stage for the propulsion of the action which is sometimes very fast moving.
Occasionally the U.S. centric translation feels slightly clunky in its phrasing, perhaps this is deliberate. Some of the more minor, albeit pivotal, characters are fairly one-dimensional. Again, perhaps deliberately so, to throw the main characters into greater focus.
The first third of the book appears to lack cohesion as the separate threads of the three assassins’ stories are separately woven, before becoming intertwined. You will frequently wonder where on earth the narrative is going next. If it feels that there is some greater force behind the actions of the characters, a tragic deus ex machina, or puppet master pulling divine strings – on several levels, then a read, right to the very last page will be rewarding.
This is not an author I knew, or indeed a book I would have chosen for myself, but it nibbles away at you, almost demands to be read, once started and I defy you to walk away from it without a sense of having read something odd, very different and yet something rather special.
TRANSLATOR: SAM MALISSA
