Read as part of CBR15Bingo: getaway. I’m swapping this one out for “violence (banned).” Though this book is plenty violent. Plus, I really want an excuse to write about this book and make it count for CBR15Bingo.
I don’t know what to say really. This trilogy wrecked me.
And to think, I wouldn’t have picked it up if not for journalist Max Read’s suggestion.
I read the last three books of David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet last year and you can look at the tag to see the progression on my reviews. I appreciated what he was doing. I even liked large parts of it. It demands a reread. But Peace, a Yorkshire native, is too close to the action. That was a personal story and even heavily fictionalized, I don’t know if there’s enough distance from the familiar Broken White Men that guys like Peace (and me and so many others) have been trained to write about with rapt fascination.
But this series…whew.
I reviewed Tokyo Year Zero at length; it’s one of my favorite reads of 2023 and maybe my favorite of this series. I gave Occupied City three stars and I’m regretting that. It was a frustrating read but a good one and I know I’ll love it again with the familiarity of structure and story.
This one brings it home with the hammer hitting the nail firmly and cleanly. I mean…whoo buddy.
Telling the real life murder of Shimoyama Sadamori in three different decades, Peace continues his examination of postwar rebuilding in Tokyo, broadening the scope for the last two to the 1964 Olympics and the 80s when Japan’s economy was at an all-time high. The first two stories feature your typical Broken Man detectives—one Japanese, the other American. The brokenness of the characters is the point and beside the point: they’re used to tell the story. And in typical Peace fashion, they get close to peeking behind the curtain without seeing it. All they’re left with is rumor, innuendo and suspicious characters in the battered-but-rebuilding city of Tokyo.
The third story…can’t say a word about it. There’s just no way. It would spoil the whole thing. It’s just…it’s brutal. But in the Peace-ian way of truths revealed.
These books…I don’t have more words. This review will have to suffice for now. Damn.
