Product Description

August 1946. One year on from surrender and Tokyo lies broken and bleeding at the feet of its American victors. Facing the threat of a second purge, the surviving officers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Dept, with their changed identities and false names, realise they can trust no one, least of all each other. Meanwhile another war is breaking out, as 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 victims and their killer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #171288 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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
A Tokyo policeman tries to sort out a series of murders one year after the surrender to the Americans.Peace (GB84, 2004, etc.) sets his latest in Japan 1946. The country's pseudo-emperor is Douglas MacArthur, an invisible figure whose subjects slog away in the ruins of their cities, trying to rebuild a civilization. In a place with no running water, Detective Minami, persistent, lice-ridden and drug-addicted, is attempting to solve a string of strangulations. The victims are all young women, possibly prostitutes, and the detective work must be done in the most chaotic conditions: The city is choked with rubble, the markets are controlled by criminals and the police force is crippled by corruption. Minami has other problems as well. He's haunted by his complicity in the crimes of the late Chinese occupation, beholden to one of the crime lords for money and drugs and unable to resist the charms of his mistress while his family is close to starvation. This relentlessly bleak police procedural unfolds amidst the endless background noise of hammers and the maddened thoughts of Minami, who is coming to understand that his superiors, men with questionable pasts, want him to fail in his investigation and may even want him dead. The investigation comes to a head when Minami and a possibly treacherous colleague are sent out of Tokyo to the small hometown of the murderer. The Japanese-ness Peace layers on may be overwhelming for some readers - there is, for example, no equivalent for the constant stream of apologies out of everyone's mouth - and the psychosis is tough going, but crime readers may fancy the change of scenery. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review
'An original voice in crime fiction, David Peace's first novel in his latest trilogy is an exhilarating read [and a] compelling story.'

Customer Reviews

Bleak thrill in post war Tokyo
I really enjoyed Damned UTD and looked forward to reading this first book in his envisaged Tokyo trilogy. It is set in a bleak landscape and other than the difficulty in memorising all the names of the Japanese characters I have enjoyed the read. A tight taut dark novel which does put perspective on how we live today.

Absolute rubbish
Tokyo Year Zero shows what a one trick pony David Peace is becoming as a writer. The trademark style, once so distinctive, is now wearing thin as page after page of ranting unfolds to make this story almost unintelligible. Blending staccato, repetitive narrative with page-long ramblings that open each section of the book, little story really emerges from this. Interestingly, for a book praised by James Ellroy on the cover as being "part historical blinder" - virtually no atmosphere of ruined Japan emerged for me in the pages of this awful, awful book. Peace lists impressive reference material at the end of the book, so has clearly done his homework. Shame then, that it only merits a 0/10 from me as reader. The opener of a planned trilogy, I personally will be bailing out after this instalment. Virtually unreadable, totally unenjoyable.

Disappointing
I felt mildly uncomfortable reading "Tokyo Year Zero". It's definitely an ambitious novel, based on a true crime committed in post-surrender Japan, in a country where lives have been destroyed and a proud people are surviving hand to mouth. Given the struggling state of the country, it's odd to think that murders are being investigated but Inspector Minami is assigned to the case and quickly uncovers that the murder is not a once-off but part of the handiwork of a serial rapist and killer.

It's clear that Minami is a man struggling with the world around him, and Peace uses inner monologues to bring the character to the reader. Repetitive sequences of words are designed to evoke the sounds of the world but fail to engage. Instead they feel intrusive and distracting. Although it's clear that the book is well-researched and the despair of post-war Japan is quite evocative, the unexciting plot, combined with the repetitive writing, means that the book falls short.