Inspiring Older Readers

posted on 29 Jan 2025

Three Assassins by Kotaro Isaka

Back in the summer months of 2024, I read and reviewed Isaka’s Bullet Train and I found it a heady, helter-skelter ride. Although Bullet Train was the first novel of Isaka’s to be translated into English, it was, in terms of sequence, the second in the series he is writing – the first being Three Assassins, which perversely, is the second to be translated.

As a result of this odd sequencing, there are characters and echoes of characters to be found in Three Assassins that will come to the fore in Bullet Train. Having said that, you should now be alerted to the fact that Three Assassins is very much more of the same compelling, fast-moving action, packed with bizarre characters of the same kind that we had first time around.

The plot is really quite simple but it plays out with remarkable complexity. Suzuki, who is the nearest thing we have to an everyman in this book, has joined a gang of criminals in order to get as close as possible to the son of the gang’s leader in order to claim revenge for the thoughtless and callous killing of Suzuki’s wife in a car accident.

As he tries to wheedle his way in, he finds his mission foiled by the fact that this gangland leader’s son is bumped off by another assassin – The Pusher – a shadowy figure who engineers deaths by pushing people into traffic. Suzuki happens to be one of the few people who have spotted The Pusher in action and he tracks him back to where he lives.

But Isaka’s world isn’t so simple. Once you enter this crazy Japanese underworld there seem to be assassins everywhere – usually chasing each other – and each with an idiosyncratic method of dispatching their victims. So, in addition to The Pusher, we meet The Cicada, who specialises in the dispassionate killing of whole families and The Whale, who had the magnetic ability to convince his victims to commit ‘suicide’.

I’m not even going to attempt any sort of summary of the plot because that would be foolish and it would totally spoil the reading experience. Suzuki finds himself unwittingly drawn further and further into the chaotic, often surreal world of the assassins and Isaka’s skill is to make us somehow feel that this crazy world makes some kind of sense. Ian Wang in his review of the book for The New York Times in 2022, perfectly captures the feel of the novel:

“A surrealist fable disguised as a crime novel, “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.”

I’m not sure how many more times Isaka could pull off the same tricks he does with this and with Bullet Train. There’s definitely a comic-book feel to the reading experience and I found it a bit disappointing that the few moments when there’s a chance of deepening the ideas and messages, they are not really taken up – you aren’t going to find any real contemplation about the nature of crime, personal responsibility, violence or even social structures that create and support characters like this. The invitation is to sit back and feel the adrenalin rush – which is ok but ultimately like living exclusively on sugar.

The book is now in paperback and you won’t pay more than £10 for a copy.

 

Terry Potter

January 2025