Kōtarō Isaka

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: “Three Assassins feels like a fever dream that makes sense when you’re in it, but whose strange contours linger long after you wake up.” —New York Times

Three Assassins is the high-stakes, high-style, and utterly propulsive follow-up to Kotaro Isaka’s international bestseller, Bullet Train, a Crime Reads “Most Anticipated Book of 2021.”

Suzuki is an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. To get answers and his revenge, Suzuki abandons his show more law-abiding lifestyle and takes a low-level job with a front company operated by the crime gang Maiden, who are responsible for his wife’s death. Before long, Suzuki finds himself caught up in a network of quirky and highly effective assassins:

The Cicada is a knife expert.
The Pusher nudges people into oncoming traffic.
The Whale whispers bleak aphorisms to his victims until they take their own lives.

Intense and electrifying, Three Assassins delivers a wild ride through the criminal underworld of Tokyo, populated by contract killers who are almost superhumanly good at their jobs.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I read these books out of order; the fact is I didn't realize at the time I read them that there *was* an order! I strongly recommend reading this book before reading Bullet Train, because many details will make a lot better sense in the latter if you do.

A truly trippy, peculiarly anime-inflected story about...about...umm...Life, The Universe, and Everything, maybe? How easy it is to come unmoored from societal norms when they stop serving you? When an ordinary teacher's wife is assassinated, he doesn't grieve and get on with life. He turns his entire existence into a revenge-dealing machine. (Okay, okay, it's totally fridging and it's not a little icky in 2024, but the book was written in Japan in 2004; your 2020s US sensibilities are a liability in this read.)

What kept me reading in spite of feeling, quite often in fact, that I wanted to give Suzuki a hard shake and a two-cheek slap, was the inventiveness and gonzo pace of the exercise. Read it in chunks, not driblets. You'll think too much about how incredibly implausible the entire enterprise is unless you build a solid head of steam. The first ~30 pages at the least should be taken at a gulp.

A big part of the universe created here is the awful, cruel nature of modern society. The assassins who commit mayhem for money are no more horrible than corporate lobbyists who pay to pass laws that get their masters out of having to pay taxes, or damages, or take responsibilty for any awful thing that their (in)actions cause.

And that really os the heart of the book: Who are the clients for the terrible deeds that Suzuki and his co-workers are performing? Who has the money to make these terrible things happen, untraceably, repeatably, repeatedly?

Those in Control.

I'm not going to belabor this point. If you get it, you got it already. This, however, very important in the events that you're reading about in this book, and the next. The cruelty of the universe isn't personal. There isn't some vengeful gawd looking down on you and pointing an accusatory digit, using that to hurl thunderbolts and maledictions upon you more precisely. It would be, I suppose, comforting if there were.

Instead it's those in control looking at a population-level situation and moving the pieces of the solution into place. The motives, the results, the consequences...never vouchsafed to any of the victims inevitably suffering from those impersonal moves. Give someone a target for their misery and that target takes the heat and bears the blows. That's gawd's purpose in religion: the heat for the awfulness of the world is justified because gawd is mad at you, or your neighbors, or The Gays, or...the list is endless, changes with (often generational) fashions, and never includes the real culprits. If one depersonalizes, takes the face away from, the abuser, there's no outrage to build into rage, then erupt into violence.

Suzuki learns this horrible truth in the first thirty pages. No one murdered his wife. She was killed by a person, but not for a reason. Now what? Knowledge is power. Power over what you do next. Suzuki has to decide what will replace his desire for personal revenge.

And that, mes amis, is this novel's point. I'm not particularly edified by it, I'm not too happy about the violence herein so lovingly described. I was entertained by the full-throttle pace of the storytelling. I was abosrbed by this Everyman's decisions, the thoughtfulness of them, and the resultant mayhem. If you saw the westernized adaptation of Bullet Train, you have a grasp on the pace and style of events. But, and this is CRUCIAL!, you have no smallest idea of what the story is about. Read the books. show less

This book focuses on multiple sets of characters, all of whom are traveling on the same bullet train. There's Kimura, a recovering alcoholic whose young son is comatose in the hospital. Kimura is planning to kill Satoshi, the Prince, the angelic-looking but sociopathic teenager who hurt Kimura's son. There's Nanao, the self-proclaimed "unluckiest assassin in the world," who's been sent to steal a suitcase - a seemingly easy job, but Nanao knows that nothing is ever easy when he's involved. show more And then there's Tangerine and Lemon, two assassins who've been tasked with retrieving their boss's kidnapped son and a suitcase, the very same suitcase that Nanao has been sent to steal. Their job seems easy too, and just about done...until the boss's son suddenly winds up dead.

This is set in the same world as Isaka's Three Assassins and takes place sometime after it (a few years, I think?). Although this can be read as a standalone, there are a few references to characters and events here and there that will make more sense if you've read Three Assassins first.

As in Three Assassins, there was a lot going on in this, and a lot of moving pieces involved. To help readers try to keep track, the author even included a diagram of the bullet train at the start of each chapter, and marked which cars that characters from that chapter were in.

I read this before watching the movie. The movie follows the tone and events of the book better than I expected...up until the end, at which point it added explosions that didn't exist in the book in an effort to make everything bigger and flashier. The movie also ruined what I thought was one of the book's best reveals. If you have to choose one or the other, I definitely recommend the book over the movie.

Anyway, this was a fun, weird, and slick read. Although this was technically filled with killers, the only character I truly disliked, for the most part, was the Prince. I very much wanted to see that little monster finally suffer some consequences for his horrible actions. Meanwhile, it was easy to forget that Tangerine and Lemon were supposed to be dangerous, considering they spent so much on-page time bickering and talking about Thomas and Friends. And Nanao honestly seemed like a fairly decent guy, despite his profession.

I liked the way that having most of the characters and action trapped on the bullet train concentrated the various storylines. Even though the connections between everything weren't always immediately apparent, having everything happen on the bullet train made it easy to see that everyone would be forced to cross paths sooner or later.

I just learned that there's a third book available in English after this one (and a fourth book, soon to be released!). I definitely plan on reading it.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Suzuki is an ordinary man seeking vengeance for his wife, who was murdered by a drunk driver. The driver was the son of Mr. Terahara, the man in charge of a criminal gang called Fräulein. The best Suzuki could come up with was to infiltrate Fräulein and somehow get close enough to Mr. Terahara's son in order to kill him. Unfortunately, getting into Fräulein has involved helping the gang sell drugs to young women. If that wasn't bad enough, now he's being asked to kill someone in order to show more prove his loyalty to the gang. He's not sure he can bring himself to go that far.

When an assassin known as the Pusher kills Mr. Terahara's son right in front of Suzuki's eyes, he's suddenly drawn even further into a world of almost supernaturally talented assassins. The Pusher kills his victims by pushing them into oncoming traffic and then slipping away unnoticed. The Whale convinces his victims to take their own lives, using only his words and unnerving gaze. The Cicada is a knife expert capable of ruthlessly killing whole families.

Can a man like Suzuki, a former teacher, somehow navigate this world and find a way out, or will he end up as dead as any of the assassins' other victims?

This was interesting, strange, and, in the end, bewildering. There were a bunch of moving pieces - Suzuki, looking for the Pusher and then fretting over what the gang will do to the man and his family once he finds them; Hiyoko, Suzuki's boss in the gang, trying to track Suzuki and the Pusher down; the Whale, who has started to hallucinate visions of his former victims; and Cicada, who yearns for a bit more power and freedom and whose path has just crossed with the Whale's.

I didn't really know what to expect when I started this. There are elements of black comedy, and it seemed like no one could go anywhere without stumbling across a killer with a nickname and slick reputation. Even Cicada, who seemed more small-time compared to the Pusher and the Whale, was practically unstoppable - aside from Suzuki, who really was just an ordinary guy who'd gotten himself in too deep, these characters were all dangerous and fearless.

While I knew there had to be more going on than Suzuki realized, somehow the one revelation near the end still took me by surprise.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Bullet Train by Kōtarō Isaka is a 2021 Harry N. Abrams publication. (Originally published in 2010)

If you’ve seen the movie ‘Bullet Train’ starring Brad Pitt, this is the book it is based on. I have not seen the movie yet- but I probably will check it out someday… but this a review for the BOOK-

So- here are my thoughts…

This book is the English translation of this Japanese thriller, and I had no idea what to expect, really, but at least the blurb explains the book is satirical in show more nature- so I was prepared for something a little offbeat.

As it turns out, it is a bit off the beaten path- especially for American audiences, because the style is far removed from the formula most of us expect from a thriller.

But it is very stylish- and commanded my undivided attention from start to finish. As promised the story has some dark, but very funny humor if one can appreciate that sort of thing. I’m not sure dark humor and satire are always a good fit for mainstream audiences- so it might not be to everyone’s taste- but it’s right up my alley.

While this might seem like a ‘simple job’ it can get a little complicated- because while this bullet train is only carrying a small number of passengers, but they all have a sinister agenda. In this case, a particular suitcase is highly sought after by those on board for various reasons, while a psychopathic teenage boy has lured the revenge seeking father of comatose child onboard- taunting him with the possibility that his child’s life could be in danger if anything were to happen to him.

Once the stage is set, the twists and turns are a non-stop mind trip. By turns the book is very clever, entertaining, philosophical, dark, smart and funny! Occasionally, it was little challenging for me, as I did have to work to keep everything straight sometimes, but in the end, the effort was worth it.

Overall, I can’t speak for the movie- but I really liked the book!!

4 stars show less