Synopsis (from
the publisher):
A fierce, exquisitely dark novel that plunges us into post–World
War II Occupied Japan in a Rashomon-like retelling of a mass poisoning
(based on an actual event), its aftermath, and the hidden wartime
atrocities that led to the crime.
On January 26, 1948, a man identifying himself as a public health
official arrives at a bank in Tokyo. There has been an outbreak of
dysentery in the neighborhood, he explains, and he has been assigned by
Occupation authorities to treat everyone who might have been exposed to
the disease. Soon after drinking the medicine he administers, twelve
employees are dead, four are unconscious, and the
“official” has fled ...
Twelve voices tell the story of the murder from different perspectives.
One of the victims speaks, for all the victims, from the grave. We read
the increasingly mad notes of one of the case detectives, the desperate
letters of an American occupier, the testimony of a traumatized
survivor. We meet a journalist, a gangster-turned-businessman, an
“occult detective,” a Soviet soldier, a well-known painter.
Each voice enlarges and deepens the portrait of a city and a people
making their way out of a war-induced hell.
— ◊ —
— ◊ —
Occupied City
The Tokyo
Trilogy
David
Peace
Knopf (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-307-26375-4 (0307263754)
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-26375-9 (9780307263759)
Publication Date: February 2010
List Price: $25.95
— ◊ —
Review: Based on
a true crime committed in 1948 Tokyo, Occupied
City by David Peace is for the most part a fascinating retelling
of the circumstances surrounding that fateful day when 12 innocent
people lost their lives in a bank.
A man posing as a health inspector enters the Teikoku Bank in Tokyo
just before closing and announces that its employees have been exposed
to dysentery. He possesses an antidote, but they must hurry. The
"treatment" is really a fast-acting poison, which kills 12 of the
employees and seriously injures 4 others. The man makes off with a
substantial sum of money. Hirasawa Sadamichi is arrested and two years
later convicted of the murders, attempted murders, and robbery, based
in large part on a confession, which he subsequently recants. Sentenced
to be hung for his crimes, a campaign to clear his name kept his appeal
process going until his death in jail in 1987.
Occupied City consists
of twelve "candles" or chapters, each told from a different perspective
by a fictional character associated in some way -- sometimes quite
tangentially -- with the crime. It can be an exceptionally challenging
book to read; fully half the "candles" are written in an atypical,
non-narrative manner, including the first one, which is written from
the perspective of the victims -- but does provide a foundation for
what is to follow. Examples of other chapters include passages from the
investigating detective's notebook (written as one long paragraph per
entry), letters from an American medical officer to both his wife and
commander detailing his investigation into the potential development of
biological weapons by the Japanese during the war, newspaper articles
and commentary written by a journalist covering the story and its
aftermath, and towards the end, chapters each from the man convicted of
the crime and someone identified only as "the Killer".
Far more of a literary novel than a mystery, some might be tempted to
call Occupied City a tour de
force based on its unusual approach to storytelling ... but no doubt
many others will be puzzled, if not put off by it. It may help to read
the chapters out of sequence; with the exception of the first and the
last few chapters, there doesn't seem to be any specific order to the
rest, though the author may find it objectionable to read it in this
way, tampering with the art, as it were. Still, it is possible to skip
ahead if one chapter appears to be particularly daunting, then return
to it later; the overall experience is worth the effort.
Special thanks to Random House for providing an ARC of Occupied City for this review.
Review Copyright © 2010 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read Occupied City? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series …
Tokyo
Year Zero
Knopf (Hardcover), September 2007
ISBN-10: 0-30726374-6 (0307263746)
ISBN-13: 978-0-30726374-2 (9780307263742)
Occupied City
Knopf (Hardcover), February 2010
ISBN-10: 0-307-26375-4 (0307263754)
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-26375-9 (9780307263759)
Omnimystery keywords for Occupied City ...
Location(s) referenced: Tokyo, Japan.
