Tokyo Year Zero

December 20, 2010
Set in 1946, a year after the Japanese surrender, Peace's true crime–based novel follows a police detective, Minami, as he searches for a serial killer who has slain several young women in central Tokyo. Like the author's more recent work, Occupied City (both part of a planned Tokyo trilogy), this one is written in a highly stylized, almost poetic manner, shifting from internal monologues to dialogue, incorporating rhythmically repeated phrases and sounds. When spoken, the effect can be mesmerizing and fluid, especially with perfect timing and execution. In Occupied City, six readers did an exceptional job. Here, Mark Bramhall is just as effective operating solo. Not only does he create distinctive accented voices for a large, diverse cast—including the depressed, driven Minami; his weary, submissive wife; bombastic bosses; a sarcastic partner and a growling sadistic gang lord—Bramhall vocalizes gun shots and animal sounds. Even more important, he aids the author in summoning a mood of desolation and desperation that falls like fog over a war-ravaged, conquered city. A Vintage paperback.

Starred review from July 9, 2007
British author Peace (GB84
, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction) bases this riveting novel on a real-life serial-killer case in post-WWII Japan. When the nude body of a young woman turns up in a local park, Inspector Minami of the Tokyo police and his squad of detectives investigate. At the crime scene, Minami finds another woman’s body nearby and begins to suspect there will be more to come. Minami, married and a father of two, is smart, tenacious and experienced; he’s also addicted to sedatives, keeps a mistress, is in the pocket of a local crime lord and not above sampling the wares of prostitutes he encounters while roaming the city at night. Tokyo has been heavily damaged by Allied bombing, the populace is starving, the occupying victors are overbearing and brutal; for the Japanese, there’s only an unrelenting struggle to stay alive in a nightmare world. Peace, whose complex style feels like a cross between Haruki Murakami and James Ellroy, delivers an expressionistic portrait of a harrowing, devastated time and place. 50,000 first printing.