Tokyo Year Zero - Hardcover

Peace, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571236456 ISBN 13: 9780571236459

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2007

Synopsis

August 1946. One year on from surrender and Tokyo lies broken and bleeding at the feet of its American victors. Among the survivors of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, panic is spreading. Facing the threat of a second purge the officers and detectives, with their changed identities and false names, realise that they can trust no one, least of all each other. Meanwhile another war is breaking out, as the different ethnic groups fight for control of the city's black markets.

Against this extraordinary historical backdrop, Tokyo Year Zero opens with the discovery of the bodies of two young women in Shiba Park. Against his wishes, Detective Minami is assigned to the case, and as he gets drawn ever deeper into these complex and horrific murders, he realises that his own past and secrets are indelibly linked to those of the dead women and their killer.

About this title

Review:

Tokyo Year Zero is further proof that David Peace is now one of the most ambitious and accomplished novelists of the modern era -- in any genre. He has always been an innovator, forging a striking synthesis between Noir crime writing and Yorkshire realism. Nineteen Seventy-Four was a visceral and atmospheric novel set in the year of the Silver Jubilee, with the Yorkshire Ripper at his sanguinary work. This book was the second of the Riding Quartet, and demonstrated what readers had come to expect -- a totally individual voice, with the characters (such as past-his-best journalist Jack Whitehead) memorably drawn.

Tokyo Year Zero, Peace's new novel, is another adroit synthesis, this time between the sprawling historical novel and the gritty crime genre. The author's picture of a city at war (the year is 1946) rivals that of any modern novelist in vividness and authenticity. It is one year on from the surrender, and Tokyo is struggling to maintain its pride after the American victory that destroyed its imperialist ambitions. The police force barely functions, and a variety of unpleasant individuals struggle for supremacy in Tokyo's thriving black market. Peace's protagonist, Detective Minami, is assigned a difficult case: the bodies of two women are found in Sheba Park, but as he begins to dig beneath the surface of an increasingly baffling and complex mystery, Minami finds (to his dismay) that his personal past -- and personal secrets -- are somehow involved with the murderer and his savage killings.

This first book in the Tokyo trilogy is as surprising and idiosyncratic an offering as we have come to expect from David Peace, and it's a safe bet that readers will be impatient for the remaining books in the sequence. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"Part historical stunner, part Kurosawa crime film, an original all the way. David Peace's depiction of a war-torn metropolis both crumbling and ascendant is peerless, and the story itself is beautifully wrought." --James Ellroy"Brilliant, perplexing, claustrophobic. . . . Exhilarating." --"The New York Times Book Review""The big post-war Japan novel, a fierce marriage of mood and narrative drive. David Peace continues to polish and advance his particular brand of literary crime fiction." --George Pelecanos"Once this hellish locomotive of a book hooks onto its tracks it becomes difficult to stop." --"San Francisco Chronicle"

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0571236456
• ISBN 13: 9780571236459
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368