Tokyo Redux
A novel
-
-
4.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
A thrilling postmodern noir about the real-life disappearance, in 1949, of one of Japan's most powerful figures, and the three men who try--and fail--to crack the case.
Tokyo, July 1949. The president of the National Railways of Japan vanishes. As American and Japanese investigators scrambled for answers, the case went cold--and it remains unsolved to this day. In Tokyo Redux, celebrated crime writer David Peace channels drama, research, and intrigue into this strikingly intelligent fictionalization of Japan's most enduring and haunting mystery.
Spanning decades, Peace's novel reveals how the lives of three men all come to revolve around the same inexpicable disappearance. Starting in American-occupied Tokyo, where tension and confusion reign, American detective Harry Sweeney leads the missing-person investigation for General MacArthur's GHQ. Fifteen years later, as Tokyo prepares for the global spotlight as host of the summer Olympics, private investigator Murota Hideki--who was a policeman during the Occupation--is confronted by this very same case, and is forced to address something he's been hiding for more than a decade. And twenty-plus years after that, as Emperor Shōwa lays dying, Donald Reichenbach, an aging American eking out a living in Japan teaching and translating, discovers that the final reckoning of the greatest mystery of the era is now in his hands.
The concluding installment of Peace’s acclaimed Tokyo Trilogy, Tokyo Redux is a page-turning portrait of post-World War II Tokyo and an inside look into a storied crime that continues to haunt multiple generations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Peace's brilliant final entry in his monumental Tokyo trilogy (after 2009's Occupied City) fictionalizes the notorious 1949 Shimoyama disappearance case. Tasked with eliminating thousands of jobs, Sadanori Shimoyama, the president of the Japanese National Railways, is under enormous pressure and scrutiny from a population that's already struggling just to survive when he goes missing. The next day, his remains are found strewn across some railroad tracks. Is it murder or suicide? Harry Sweeney, an alcoholic American detective working for the U.S. occupying forces, is the first to lose himself in the case, which defies easy answers, followed 15 years later by ex-cop-turned-PI Murota Hideki, who sifts through the ghosts of the country's painful past as Japan prepares for the 1964 summer Olympics. Finally, a quarter century later, the story picks up from the viewpoint of Donald Reichenbaugh, an aging former intelligence officer living out his days as a teacher and translator, who's forced to reckon with his own guilt and misgivings about the events of 1949. Peace's dense, baroque style can be daunting, but those who persevere will be well rewarded. Readers will be reminded of James Ellroy at his obsessive best.
