The Devil of Nanking: an extraordinary, electrifying thriller by one of Britain's bestselling crime-writers - Softcover

Hayder, Mo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553824856 ISBN 13: 9780553824858

Publisher: Bantam, 2010

Synopsis

Tokyo, 1990Grey Hutchins is in pursuit of an obsession. She is searching for a piece of film taken during the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. Some say it never existed., Grey is certain that it does, and that it lies hidden - somewhere in Tokyo. Alone in an alien city, Grey becomes a hostess in an exclusive club catering for Japanese businessmen - and gangsters. One gangster dominates - an old man in a wheelchair surrounded by a terrifying entourage - who is rumoured to rely on a powerful elixir for his continued health., It is an elixir that others want - at any price ... With its focus on 1990's Tokyo and Nanking in 1937, The Devil of Nanking is a literary thriller of the highest order. With its heady atmosphere of overt violence, lurking fear and sexual tension, this is a novel that takes hold of the reader and does not let go until its explosive final pages.

About this title

Review:

Tokyo is another of Mo Hayder's deliciously chilling criminal outings, but probably won't produce the frisson of disapproval that such novels as Birdman and The Treatment did. The days are gone when Hayder was identified as one of a cadre of women writers who did something totally unacceptable: produce grisly crime novels quite as unsettling as the products of male imagination. People seem to have finally accepted that the tough crime novel needn't be an exclusively male preserve.

Her troubled female protagonist in Tokyo is Grey, haunting the thronging streets of Tokyo in search of an elusive piece of film recording the infamous Nanking massacre of 1937. But did the film ever exist? The past is a touchy subject for Grey, with incidents in her own life that she has not yet come to terms with. She ill-advisedly becomes a hostess in a nightclub where the clientele is a tad unsavoury (another example of Hayder utilising real-life crime for her plots, with the echoes of a recent murder case). And Grey finds a lead to her quest: a taciturn survivor of the massacre who is now an academic, with no time for the woman pestering him. But Grey makes progress with him--until she encounters a powerful Godfather figure and his violent associates, with a clandestine source for his well-being a much sought-after elixir. Soon, Grey's life becomes two things: very complicated and a place of considerable danger.

The change of locale for Mo Hayder here has ensured that the imaginative energy of her earlier books is consolidated, as is the rejection of the now hackneyed serial killer plot. Atmosphere is brilliantly sustained, set pieces are pulse-racing, and (most satisfying of all) Grey is a truly complex and damaged heroine, the perfect conduit for the reader through this dark world. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

Haunting, lyrical, disturbing, important, suspenseful and wonderfully written. Deeply felt and haunting. Elegiac and important. Most of all it sticks with you well after the final page is turned. Left me stunned and haunted. This is writing of breathtaking power and poetry. The epic thriller of the year --.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0553824856
• ISBN 13: 9780553824858
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480