I don't know if the concept of this list includes posting
reviews - if not, please let me know! I just couldn't resist
sharing my latest nice noirish read.
KINKI LULLABY by Isaac Adamson Dark Alley October 2004
As a reader, I sometimes like to move away from the standard
mystery settings and venture into exotic locales. When done
well, the setting can almost become a character of its own
that adds just as much to a book as the humans that populate
its pages. Isaac Adamson does it very, very well in KINKI
LULLABY, the fourth in the Billy Chaka series, all of which
are set in different cities in Japan. KINKI (meaning Kyoto,
Osaka, Kobe and the surrounding areas) is mostly set in
Osaka. What Adamson does is to immerse us not only in today's
pop culture in that city but its past as well, bringing the
reader fascinating information about the Bunraku puppets
which originated hundreds of years ago. That magic
combination of past and present leads to an extremely
interesting reading experience.
Billy Chaka is a writer for an Asian teen magazine published
in the US. Several years earlier, he had written an article
about a Bunraku puppet prodigy by the name of Tetsuo Oyamada.
Billy has been invited to Osaka to accept an award for that
article. He finds the whole thing somewhat strange, but it
begins to make sense when he finds that the award is being
sponsored by Tetsuo's father, Daichi Oyamada, who needs Billy
to find out some information for him. In Bunraku puppetry, it
takes years to achieve mastery of the form. At 13, Tetsuo was
the youngest performer ever given the honor of appearing as a
leg operator at the prestigious National Bunraku Theater. He
has been expelled from the troupe after an unexplained
violent incident, after which he disappeared. Mr. Oyamada
wants to know what happened and hopes to get his son
reinstated into the theater.
Meanwhile, an American is killed at the hotel where Billy is
staying and Billy finds a strange woman hiding in the
stairwell. He begins to wonder if he was the target, as he
had jokingly given the man his name tag shortly before the
incident. Billy moves around in a dark world as he
investigates the link between the Tetsuo situation and the
homicide. It's almost as if he's living a modernist Bunraku
play, with its strange twists and turns and ever more deviant
and weird characters populating the pages, almost a series of
hallucinations.
It's actually senseless to even attempt a plot summary of
this book, as it is full of threads and sub-threads. I liken
it to a Pachinko machine: all the balls are rolling around
and clanging together haphazardly but ultimately, each falls
into its place. You win the game by controlling the speed of
the balls and directing them into special pockets which earn
you a prize. Adamson definitely won the game with this book.
His style of writing is very visual, and he keeps the
adrenaline flowing throughout. Billy Chaka is a great
character, and I loved the wit and energy of the book.
Maddy Van Hertbruggen Crime fiction reviewer for:
- I Love a Mystery Newsletter: http://www.iloveamysterynewsletter.com/
- Reviewing the Evidence: http://reviewingtheevidence.com/
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