Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
This impressive debut by an impossibly young author is constructed as part-Japanese Murder Mystery, and part-Existential Science Fiction Thriller but once combined, it is an addictive and hugely thought-provoking narrative.
The novel opens with Haru, a young woman who is attending the Dazarfu Driving School in regional Japan. Her Driving Instructor is the mysterious Isagawa a former tenacious Police Inspector. The streets of Dazarfu are deserted because World Governments announced [“Black Wednesday”] the discovery of a giant ‘Asteroid 2021-NQT’ aka ‘Telos’ heading toward Earth. Scientists calculated the trajectory to impact the city of Fukuoka in the Kyushu region of Japan. Much of South East Asia will be instantly destroyed, while the rest of the global human population will be subject to mass extinction as billions of tonnes of rock will be displaced into the atmosphere, blocking out the Sun for decades. All Plant and Animal life on [what remains of] Earth will die.
So what [and why] are these two women Haru [the student], and Isagawa [the tutor] engaged in driving lessons in regional small-town Japan, when giant asteroid ‘Telos’ is headed toward them? Initially there was global unrest, riots, rape, murders, violent disorder and despair leading to epidemics of suicide.
Most of the inhabitants of Japan have fled the asteroid impact epicentre, trying to make it to South America. This mass migration is only postponing their deaths from predicted wars, famine and disease. Haru and her driving instructor Isagawa ignore the rumours of deep underground shelters for elites, and spaceships for the ultra-rich. They focus on avoiding the bodies of those who committed suicide [‘dying wild’] on their drives.
There are a few people left; the elderly, the infirm and the altruistic who stay behind to care for those unable to flee, such as remaining Police Officers Ginjima and Inchimora, and the oyster-eating brothers Akihito and Hikaru. The driving lessons are halted when Haru and Isagawa discover the mutilated body of a woman in the trunk of their training car. Isagawa’s former Police instincts come to the surface. It appears the dead woman was Lawyer Mieko Hizumi and the wounds on her body indicate that she was brutally tortured before she was stabbed to death and bundled into the trunk of their training car. .
The bodies of Yuchi Takanash [a high-school dropout] and Jumya Tacinom [a model student] are also discovered with multiple stab-wounds in abandoned cars. Linking the body of the Lawyer [Mieko Hizumi] with the two adolescents, Isagawa concludes that there is a spree-killer operating in the area. But the former Detective asks “but why commit random murder when the world is ending and everyone will be killed?”
Haru recalls the names [of the murdered boys] Yuici and Junya from her memory - they were friends with her estranged [and missing] younger brother Seigo.
What remains of the Police is complete disinterest in these murders [and the whereabouts of a missing youth] when contrasted against the imminent extinction of humanity.
Araki’s novel recalls Ben Winter’s The Last Policeman fused with the classic Japanese whodunits/whydunnits of Seicho Matsumoto and dystopian fiction of Sam Youd aka John Christopher [The Death of Grass aka No Blade of Grass].
With no help from the authorities, our duo of Haru and Isagawa find assistance from the Oyster-eating brothers Akihito and Hikaru and from the “Holdout Villages” where the last remaining Japanese people shelter in repurposed shopping malls. They discover whispers of a series of hit-and-run murders by an unknown madman termed ‘The Taxi Killer’. Could this automotive serial-killer be linked to the spree-killer that our duo are hunting?
And what is the significance of Haru’s missing brother Seigo?
How random is life and death?
Though the novel doesn’t always succeed, the sheer ambition [and originality] from such a young and accomplished writer must be applauded. Though dark, there is subtle humour striated in the narrative which probes the good and bad sides of human nature and the randomness of life and death.
So as the asteroid fast approaches, Haru and Isagawa’s investigation gathers pace toward a frantically violent climax.
Bravo.
Translated from Japanese into English by Jesse Kirkwood
