Mo Hayder’s latest novel Tokyo is long overdue and a welcome return to the crime fiction milieu by this author. Told as two intertwining stories which soon come together, Tokyo is a haunting, bleak, but lyrical tale.
The events of 1937 Nanking Massacre are told through the eyes of a journal belonging to a Chinese resident Shi Chongming, now a visiting professor at Todai University. We also have Grey Hutchins obsessed with her own personal past who comes to Tokyo seeking to find out what happened during the Nanking Massacre as part of her study on war crimes. Her attempts to interview Shi Chongming about a film that is supposed to exist are fraught with difficulty as Chongming sees her as a harbinger of a past he is unwilling and reluctant to confront.
In an addition there is her relationship with the enigmatic American Jason, who allows her to stay in a large, rundown, deserted house and introduces her to the life of bar-hostessing so that she can earn some money. With the introduction of the Yakuza and the elixir of life Tokyo takes on a whole new facet.
This is a novel of unfurling horror with a rather shocking finale. Like Birdman
and The Treatment this latest novel is gruesome but in a totally different
way. Reading Tokyo the author challenges the reader to see how much they can
take. From the massacres to the rapes and the killing competitions that are
rumoured to be on a lost film, it is not difficult to imagine how harrowing
this must have been. On the other hand this is also a page turner, a gripping
novel that does not pull any punches. The characters are intriguing, thought-provoking
and scary. It is a novel that is hard to put down. If you enjoyed the author’s
first two books than you really need to read Tokyo, you certainly won’t be disappointed.
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Ayo Onatade
Other books are Birdman and The Treatment