Satori
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- €5.99
Publisher Description
A gripping thriller that follows assassin Nicholai Hel across Asia as he fights to regain his freedom.Sugamo Prison, Japan, October 1951. Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement for the murder of his mentor. A formidable assassin as well as a master of hoda korosu or 'naked kill', he has developed a supreme awareness of the presence of danger. Suddenly offered the chance of freedom, he feels it now as never before...Overseen by Haverford, his American spymaster he must go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union's commissioner to China. In a landscape primed for war this is a suicide mission he has no choice but to accept.Can Hel succeed in winning his freedom and if so, at what cost? And can he ever achieve his ultimate goal of satori - the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nicholai Hel was already an accomplished assassin, a master of hoda korosu ("naked kill"), when introduced in Trevanian's 1979 Shibumi. Now Winslow (The Life and Death of Bobby Z.) dons Trevanian's mantle and cloaks Hel in a tangled series of adventures and misadventures in this exciting prequel. Hel's conditional ticket out of an American-run prison in 1951 Japan requires him to acquire a new face and identity and to carry out a probably suicidal mission to assassinate Soviet commissioner Yuri Voroshenin in China. In the guise of 26-year-old Michel Guibert, a French arms dealer, Hel enters a labyrinthine world of intrigue as various Chinese factions and foreign interests struggle for advantage. Winslow successfully fleshes out Hel's mixed heritage (aristocratic Russian mother, surrogate Japanese father and mentor), and eventually takes him to war-torn Vietnam, where Hel's expertise in applying Go strategy is as important to his survival as his physical skills. Winslow has crafted an impressive prelude to a highly esteemed classic thriller.
