The Devil of Nanking: A Novel

This book has got them all. Told from the perspectives of a survivor of the horrors of Nanking and a young British woman with an obsession about Nanking, this book is definitely not for the faint of heart. But I think any reader picking up a book about Nanking would be foolish to expect a light hearted read.

Both characters, Professor Shi Chongming and Grey, are tortured and flawed characters. The talent of the author is in her ability to make them sympathetic and interesting, something she does very well. Even when Grey begins to travel down the proverbial dark road, we can still sympathize with her and know that she will find her way back to her quest. The quest is what ties these two characters together, the professor and the Brit, but the reader does not understand Grey's motivation until the very end, when all is revealed. A more discerning reader of detective books may have come to the conclusion earlier as there were interesting clues, however, I must admit, I did not. The secondary cast of characters are just as fascinating, even though many of them work as stereotypes - like the gangster, the madame with a heart of gold, and a pair of Russian tarts that never quite broke their cardboard characterizations. But they all worked in the plot. Two more interesting and disturbing characters are the sadistic Japanese nurse and a handsome American whose perversions you must read in the book as I cannot even begin to try to describe them here.

This book was very well written, fascinating and horrifying. Having just finished the novel today, I fear that I will continue to feel slightly horrified by what I have read for awhile to come. The truly disturbing part of it is that much of the atrocities in the book happened in real life. But, I am not sorry I read it.

Mo Hayder is one of the finest contemporary writers. Her books take you squirming and screaming to places you have never been. With a literary style, her damaged, but persevering, characters explore the depths of evil. The Devil of Nanking is an excellent novel. If it's possible, the book is even more gruesome than The Birdman and The Treatment. But this is an author who tackles the most difficult subjects. The Devil of Nanking is a fast-paced thriller into the exotic lands of Tokyo in the 1990s and Nanking during World War II.

The Devil of Nanking is the American re-titling of Tokyo, an eerie thriller from English author Mo Hayder. (I'm not entirely sure I hold with the new title, as it feels like a more dramatic, more overt way of selling the book - which doesn't really fit with the book's subtle creepiness)

The protagonist is Grey, an unconventional English tourist, who has flown to Tokyo in search of a missing film about the Nanking Massacre of 1930. Her one lead is the mysterious Professor Shi Congming, one of the massacre's survivors. The book is largely told from Grey's prespective in the 'present' of the 1980's, with occasional glimpses of the past, as recalled by Professor Shi.

Hayder does a very good job of maintaining the delicate balance between the past and present. This is not an airport thriller, in which two intrepid (but robust) academics find the Lost Secret of the Inca-Bible-Judas-Machine and put an end to a Global Conspiracy. Instead, everyone in Tokyo is motivated by small, human (or horribly inhuman) and, critically, personal reasons. Finding the lost video won't save the world, but, as the reader learns from the outset, it would mean a lot to Grey.

Although Grey encounters Professor Shi immediately upon arriving in the city, he's not obliging of her demands to start sifting through the horrors in his past. While he deliberates (often in the form of flashbacks), Grey is forced to wait. Left to her own devices, the lost Grey immediately sinks into the level of the Tokyo underworld. She moves to a strange, abandoned house, filled with other lost souls, and gets a job as a hostess in a Yakuza-populated nightclub. In both places, she encounters many of the denizens of the author's fruitful and disturbing imagination - a Japanese madam who pretends to be Marilyn Monroe, a truly horrific serial killer known as 'The Nurse', a crippled Yakuza lord and a foxy American waiter with a penchant for the bizarre.

As fascinatingly random this collection of oddities is, the great mystery, however, is Grey. Despite the first-person prespective, the reader knows very about the book's protagonist. In fact, for the first half of the book, the reader is only presented with more and more mysteries and allusions. However, as Tokyo rolls towards conclusion, more and more of Grey's past is unveiled - why she's in Tokyo, what happened to her, and, most critically of all, why that film is so very important.

Hayder's progressive reveal of Grey's past is delicately done, and is easily the most impressively crafted part of the book. Grey is a strange bird (no pun intended) and initially quite difficult to understand - by keeping Grey as mysterious as possible, Hayder teases the reader into following along. By the climax, Grey is officially an empathetic character, allowing Hayder to briefly take the spotlight off of her, and throw in a bit of much-needed action to break up the book's tension.

1980's Tokyo and 1930's Nanking never come to life as environments. Grey (in Tokyo) and Professor Shi (in Nanking) are so wrapped up in their own actions that the rest of the setting never comes to the fore-front. With Professor Shi, this is neatly done. The horrors of the Massacre are oft-alluded to and rarely seen - a nicely written bit of terror writing that keeps things interesting. With Grey, it is more of a disappointment. Her immediate surroundings (the house, the club) become Grey's entire world - she's so alienated from the rest of Tokyo that the bulk of her story could be staged anywhere in the world.

Tokyo is a disturbing thriller with a finely-crafted and extremely tense plot. Whereas threatening to destroy the world is easy and commonplace in horror fiction, it is much more impressive to write a novel detailings the terror suffered by a single person. In Tokyo , Mo Hayder succeeds.

Brilliantly written, I was left sitting with the book in my lap for some time after I had finished it, just thinking.

Probably though, I should begin with a token warning of how graphic this book is. Some parts will leave you a little sickened to the stomach; more so because it is based on true fact.

The book has two stories running through it, which are as intoxicatingly interesting as the other. The first, we are introduced to a young woman who travels to Tokyo trying to discover the truth to what she has believed she has read. She has been told she is crazy, and that no such thing occured, yet she is desperate to find out for herself and prove herself right.
The second story which runs along side, is of a young japanese man and his wife, and their life before and during the Nanking invasion.

The two stories meet up horrifyingly towards the end, and melt into one. You suspect, perhaps, where the story will end up...but there is still a surprise waiting.
Brilliant characters, and excellent historic references.

Best of all the Hayder books I have read yet. Couldn't put it down.

A disturbed, young British woman, known only as Grey, arrives in Tokyo after a long hospitalization in a psychiatric unit. She has been hoping for nine years to find a piece of film recording the Nanking Massacre in China by the Japanese in 1937, a massacre of 300,000 people, which the Japanese deny happened. Needing a very specific bit of information that she believes is in the film, Grey contacts Shi Chongming, an elderly Chinese professor at a Japanese university, whom she believes has the missing film. She eventually agrees to try to unearth information he wants about a life-saving medicine used by an ailing Japanese gangster in exchange for information about the Nanking film.

Grey is a fragile and interesting character, bearing both physical and emotional scars, and when she is accepted as a hostess at the "Some Like it Hot" nightclub, run by the unforgettable Strawberry Nakatani, who believes herself a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, she meets the ailing gangster, Junzo Fuyuki. Other intriguing peripheral characters add to the drama: Jason, an American with a pre-occupation with death and a sexual fetish for "weirdos" like Grey; a pair of Russian twins, who are also hostesses; and Ogawa, the transvestite nurse of the gangster, who lurks in the background and acts as an enforcer. The various settings, especially that of a falling-down house occupied by Grey, Jason, and the Russian twins, showcase the bizarre characters and their actions.

The point of view alternates between Grey, as she tries to gain control of her life by finding this mysterious film, and that of Shi Chongming, who recounts in painful detail his memories of the Japanese invasion of Nanking and the attempts that he and his wife Shujing make to to stay alive. The author's ability to present both internal action and external terror is admirable, creating both tension and heart-stopping suspense, though she does resort to obvious foreshadowing to keep the reader going: "I knew that the answer I wanted was very nearby," for example, and "I was sure, without knowing why, that just behind those blinds...."

The plot and characters are intriguing for the first two-thirds of the book. Then, as the exact nature of Grey's quest on behalf of Shi Chongming becomes clearer, the plot veers into stomach-turning sadism and perversion. Sensational deaths and ankle-deep gore increase as Grey's shocking "crime," Fuyuki's pathology, and Shi Chongming's "sin" come together in dramatic fashion. Not for the faint of heart, this pop novel is nightmare-inducing, filled with pathological behavior and grotesque deaths, minutely described. (3.5 stars). Mary Whipple

I had no idea about the massacre of Nanking until I read this book. I thought that perhaps it was fictional but after some research on the net, it all turned out to be true. The atrocities that the Japanese committed are unbelievable, and the fact that hardy anyone knows about it is astounding.

We start of with `Grey'. That's not her real name, it's the name a crazy girl who self harms gave her when they were in a psychiatric unit together.

Grey is on a mission...to prove her sanity. As a child she came across an old book in her parent's house accounting a virtually unrecognised massacre by the Japanese, on invading Nanking. Unfortunately for her, the book disappeared and her parents denied ever owning such a thing.

Desperate to prove that it wasn't something she just dreamed up, she became obsessed into proving her encounter with said book is true. She goes to college, learns Japanese and manages to discover that a film was made, depicting some of the events. The only problem is the guy that owns it, Shi Chongming, is currently teaching in Japan. So after selling most of her belongings she arrives in Tokyo, with a bag of clothes, Japanese Kanji books and rich tea biscuits(its an English thing, my mother buys them all the time, I think you would call it `cookies', dry, thick absorbent ones).

Disappointingly, Shin Chongming is very reluctant to offer her any information, and leaves her stranded. After spending a night on a park bench, she meets with the charismatic Jason, who seems very keen to have her come and work in a hostess club, owned by a Marilyn Monroe obsessed mama-san called strawberry.

It turns out however that Grey is incredibly uncomfortable at playing the hostess. Jason, who playfully nicknames her weirdo, makes her nervous, and with good reason. She finds out from her other co-workers, a couple of Russian girls, that Jason like to cover his bedroom walls with grotesque, gory pictures of dismembered humans, accidents etc and that he also rents out shady videos of the same sort. Thinking they might share something in common, Grey ends up sleeping with him, as long as she is aloud to wear apparel that covers her stomach. She also has to deal with some very shady clients, particularly an old, wheelchair ridden man, who possesses the elixir of life.

*The actual contents of this elixir came as no surprise to me. A couple of years ago I was avidly researching the concept of the Chinese eating aborted foetus's to keep them in good health. The abortion rate is very high in china due the hundreds of unwanted girls. Mothers boiling them up into soups for there children and abortionists smuggling huge jars of them(around 50 in each) to any individual who might ask(and pay). It reminded me of that controversial artist, Zhu Yu, who pretended (I think he pretended) to prepare, cook and eat a dead baby.*

This entire tirade links back to Shin Chongming, whose side story is spaced out in-between the actual events. I'll leave the rest for you to discover.

Grey is one of the most captivating characters I have ever read about, although the big `ignorance isn't the same as evilness' notion she spouts doesn't sit right with me, considering the atrocity she committed, a very long time ago.

I don't know if anyone here has read Black Beauty, but if you have, you will surely remember the chapter called `Only Ignorance' when little Joe Green, (unintentionally) nearly ends up killing BB. He meant well, just like the mother who accidentally kills her baby by applying some kooky herbal remedy instead of good old baby aspirin. But, as john says: Ignorance is next to wickedness, the devil etc.

Well I'll let you decide on that.

Buy this book (called Tokyo if you're in the UK) and prepare to be swept up in a world you could never imagine. The chilling fact is I didn't doubt the goings on for a second..

This is a well-crafted, well-paced thriller. The author presents an exciting and mysterious scene from what amounts to the middle of the story (ala J.J. Abrams) and then proceeds to tell the story from the historical and present timelines, skipping between the two for parallel development and increased tension.

The plot revolves around Grey, a young woman with an obsession and motives which are all her own. Grey is driven by a need to prove that Nanking was the site of a horrible atrocity by the Japanese in 1937, despite an almost total lack of evidence that anything occurred.

In pursuit of her obsession, she encounters a person she believes survived the atrocities, as well as a cast of seedy Tokyo fringe characters and members of the criminal underworld.

Give this book a read.

A disturbed, young British woman, known only as Grey, arrives in Tokyo after a long hospitalization in a psychiatric unit. She has been hoping for nine years to find a piece of film recording the Nanking Massacre in China by the Japanese in 1937, a massacre of 300,000 people, which the Japanese deny happened. Needing a very specific bit of information that she believes is in the film, Grey contacts Shi Chongming, an elderly Chinese professor at a Japanese university, whom she believes has the missing film. She eventually agrees to try to unearth information he wants about a life-saving medicine used by an ailing Japanese gangster in exchange for information about the Nanking film.

Grey is a fragile and interesting character, bearing both physical and emotional scars, and when she is accepted as a hostess at the "Some Like it Hot" nightclub, run by the unforgettable Strawberry Nakatani, who believes herself a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, she meets the ailing gangster, Junzo Fuyuki. Other intriguing peripheral characters add to the drama: Jason, an American with a pre-occupation with death and a sexual fetish for "weirdos" like Grey; a pair of Russian twins, who are also hostesses; and Ogawa, the transvestite nurse of the gangster, who lurks in the background and acts as an enforcer. The various settings, especially that of a falling-down house occupied by Grey, Jason, and the Russian twins, showcase the bizarre characters and their actions.

The point of view alternates between Grey, as she tries to gain control of her life by finding this mysterious film, and that of Shi Chongming, who recounts in painful detail his memories of the Japanese invasion of Nanking and the attempts that he and his wife Shujing make to to stay alive. The author's ability to present both internal action and external terror is admirable, creating both tension and heart-stopping suspense, though she does resort to obvious foreshadowing to keep the reader going: "I knew that the answer I wanted was very nearby," for example, and "I was sure, without knowing why, that just behind those blinds...."

The plot and characters are intriguing for the first two-thirds of the book. Then, as the exact nature of Grey's quest on behalf of Shi Chongming becomes clearer, the plot veers into stomach-turning sadism and perversion. Sensational deaths and ankle-deep gore increase as Grey's shocking "crime," Fuyuki's pathology, and Shi Chongming's "sin" come together in dramatic fashion. Not for the faint of heart, this pop novel is nightmare-inducing, filled with pathological behavior and grotesque deaths, minutely described. (3.5 stars). Mary Whipple

As thrillers go this book ranks right up there with the best of them! Mo Hayer does a fantastic job of incorporating actual historic events with authentic locations in Japan, and tying them all together with a story line that just keep giving and giving until the final chapter.
The book focuses on the main protagonist, Grey, and her research in to the atrocities that Japan inflicted on China in 1937. The story, which starts out with a historical tone, quickly changes gears and lets the reader embrace the history and culture of modern day Japan, while somehow always managing to bring the reader back to those historic times in 1937.
Although I would like to say more about this novel, I really don't want to give too much away. The plot is just that good. Pick this book up. You will NOT be disappointed.

The previous two novels that I read by Hayder were quite disturbing, so I expected something equally dark here. The book failed to live up to that same level as in Birdman or even Pig Island. There were a few scenes that gave me chills and turned my stomach, and the plot had some very surprising twists, but ultimately, the pacing felt surprisingly slow. And by the last page, the book did not feel concluded. It ended on an unfinished, and rather unsatisfying note. The narrator's motivations were not properly explained, and Justin's role in particular was left hanging. I liked Hayder's distinctive style and her turn of phrase, but it just didn't meet my expectations for her work. I will, however, continue to keep an eye out for this talented author - but I wouldn't recommend introducing yourself to her work in this volume. It just wasn't her best.

After reading Pig Island by Mo Hayder, I decided to pick up The Devil of Nanking as it seemed to be her best selling effort prior. Given the reviews, I expected it to be creepy and macabre, and boy was it ever. Any book that revolves around war atrocities, torture, and self-mutilation can hardly be light. The main thing about this book that makes it stands out though is Mo Hayder's ability to evoke a different place, time, and being. Her descriptions of modern Japan and 1930s China are rich and atmospheric. Her main character is disturbed, disturbing, and hard to empathize with, but her voice is pure and unsettling. You won't forget this book easily.

"The Devil of Nanking", published as "Toyko" in some countries, is not your typical novel. For a start, the heroine is flawed with some mental and physical scars. Grey, the heroine, is obsessed with finding a film on which horrific footage of the Nanking massacres exist. As we find out during the course of the book, for Grey this is a particularly personal quest.

During her efforts to find and view the film, we are taken through 1990 Tokyo, with a well written cast. Jason the weird guy, the Russian girls, the Chinese professor who witnessed the crimes perpetrated in Nanking, and a mysterious Japanese gangster and his "Nurse", although only a couple of these are sketched out in great detail. The author isn't afraid to leave certain elements and characters of the story relatively vague, which makes for a more mysterious and dark feel to the story.

"The Devil of Nanking" is very well written, the author brings to life both the bright lights of 1990 Tokyo (her own experiences of night clubs in Tokyo no doubt proved useful material to draw upon in the writing of this novel) as well as the desperate dark period of December 1937 in Nanking. At the conclusion of the book, despite the revelation of what is revealed on the film (which I actually thought was fairly well signposted) Grey seeks and ultimately finds, you are left in an almost contemplative mood. I haven't read many books that have left me like that.

I don't normally read fiction, but I have developed a fascination with East Asia, having lived in Korea and visited both Japan and China, which attracted me to the book. I was not disappointed. The Devil of Nanking is defintely worth a read. Highly recommended, especially if you like more unusual novels and settings.

Postscript: If you are after some historical background information to the Nanking massacre, I recommend "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang for a well written but controversial account (judging from the number of reviews for the book on the store) of the horrors that occurred in Nanking December 1937.

My jatlagged mind must have led me to include this book, under the blander latter title of "Tokyo", among my purchases at Narita upon departure after a whirlwind 1-week professional tour of Japan. Little did I know what a gem I would discover on a sleepless journey back to Atlanta! Impossible to put down, "Devil of Nanking" exposed me to Mo Hayder, an author of impossibly tormented powers of description and plot-building. After "Devil", I moved quickly to her only other two books available, "Birdman" and "The Treatment". How I suffered until I got my hands on "Pig Island" this year! I am currently savoring the novel as if it were the finest foi gras, to be rolled over and swallowed one morsel at a time... not for the faint of heart tho'; I am 47 and have had to sleep with the lights on!

Devil of Nanking was an impulse pick from the library's "new" shelf and my first Mo Hayder--definitely not my last. China and Japan fascinate me anyway, but Hayder raised the stakes considerably when she wove history and psychology into an unforgettable tale. Dark, disturbing, haunting, riveting, and sometimes breathtaking.

The Nazi Holocaust was the visible side of a horrific inkblot, but on the other side of the world the Nanking Massacre is the unseen half; here the atrocities are commited by the Japanese on the Chinese citizens of Nanking in 1937. These inhuman acts serve as the springboard for Hayder's bizarre cast in 1990s Tokyo. And what a cast! The main character, Grey, is so off-kilter, you don't know whether to hug and protect her or smack her back to reality. But you will care about her. The "care" you'll feel for a few of the other characters is the care you take to stay far far away from them. Hayder may have done too good a job: I'm not convinced they live only in this book's pages.

You'll need a high tolerance for gore and revulsion (not my favorites), but the Devil of Nanking was certainly worth the upset. I learned a lot from the hisorical aspects and am left to ponder the psychology involved. The thriller aspect was really riveting--almost impossible to put down. Very imaginative, quite satisfying, and probably not to be read in public as your reactions might draw attention!

Fabulous!...very interesting story written in double narrative form.....couldn't put it down!
I have been delving through the Mo Hayder catalog and after reading Skin, I wasn't really looking forward to the next Hayder piece...but I was wrong, thankfully!
This book is a gem!

I actually randomly picked this book up at the library and thought I'd give it a try. To my surprise this book kept me up all night reading, which is hard to do, and I finished it in a few hours. This is one of the best and most capturing page turners I've read in a long time. It's suspenseful, dark, sinister, and the ending is something I was never expecting. The way Mo Hayder writes really brings you into the book and before you know it you're imagining all of the crazy characters in this story. I would highly recommend it for people who aren't afraid of the unordinary.

I can understand why some people might not enjoy this novel. The narration is heavy with description, the characters are all deeply flawed, and some of the subject matter is a bit on the "icky" side. Nevertheless, I found the prose and imagery to be both beautiful and evocative, the characters interesting and oddly relatable (contrary to the position taken by some other reviewers), and the plot itself emotionally compelling. The connection between the two main characters--the precise contours of which are not revealed until the final chapters--raised the story up above the typical "psychological thriller." If you're a fan of Palahniuk and (perhaps more aptly) Katherine Dunn's "Geek Love," this is a good story for you. If you're looking for a zippy, unchallenging read featuring classically heroic characters, steer clear.

I liked the first two books (Birdman and The Treatment) a lot. I was really hoping for even better things in this book but found it a bit long and convoluted.

The writer was aiming for a dark conclusion as is the norm with her work but this time I think went a bit into the realms of fantasy. The book didn't ring true to me.

The story is really two stories in one that blend into one at the end of the book but the problem lies in both stories gradually unfolding and when one chapter ends, you start the other story for another chapter. I was continually left wanting to continue with one story or the other, and the conclusion was boredom.

What can you say about a writer whose central image for her novel seems to be . . . (I'm sorry but I think it's fair to warn you, and you'll get it anyway in the first few pages) EVISCERATION AND DISEMBOWELMENT? If you don't like graphic depictions of viciously administered death, just stop now and don't put yourself through the ugliness. The two stories of Nanking in 1937 and Tokyo in 1990 are cleverly intertwined. The young woman, Grey, obsessed with proving that her own desperate act has had a true historical antecedent, is a well-imagined character. And yes, there is a moral difference between doing something destructive in a state of ignorance, and doing other destructive and cruel things for pleasure. But any fool can tell the difference between the two main characters, with their lyric sorrow and their obsessed mission to rescue the dead, and the depraved ghouls they fall among. The suspense in the novel depends almost entirely on prurient interest in horrible acts. And horrible as the atrocities are, the idea that we have never heard of such goings on is, alas, pitifully absurd. There's something a little meretricious at the bottom of this barrel of scary times.

Mo Hayder's 'The Devil of Nanking' is an excellent read. The main character, Grey, a fish-out-of-water visiting Tokyo for an ultimately disturbing reason is so wonderfully written. She makes mistakes & does some odd things, but we never lose interest or sympathy for her. This novel covers a subject you think you may not be interested in, but it really grips you and doesn't let go. I found it wandering through a bookstore, bought it on impulse & then read it in about 2 days. I don't want to say anything much about the story because I don't want to give anything away. I am an avid reader & have read many, many books & I would put this one up against any of them. Read this book! You will not be sorry!!!

Just finished "The Devil of Nanking" and wanted to share just how incredible this book is. Not in a way classics are, but in a way I was reading it on the beach and when my husband touched my shoulder, I came back to reality and realised my hands are shaking. I wasn't startled, I was horrified.
So, is ignorance same as evil?

Be careful when you start reading this wonderful mystery, because you likely won't be putting it down for hours. The story shifts back and forth between 1990's Tokyo and the 1937 rape of Nanking, China, and the action is captivating in both time periods. Not to give away any plot lines, but the characters from both time periods combine strongly in the concluding portion of the book. If you haven't read Mo Hayder, take a chance on this haunting, unique novel. You won't be sorry.

The author did an excellent job writing a book that combines an excellent history of WWII China, the Rape of Nanking, and a look at modern Tokyo Nightlife. I was surprised that the writer was able to pull off combining all of these things, but she did and did it well. The book was hard to put down. I highly recommend it.

I think other reviews have already covered all the good points. Just wanted to add 5 stars to the count as this was my first time to read a Mo Hayder book and it was good. Really good. Could not put it down good!

I was recommended this by my brother, who described it as one of the more moving books he'd read last year. I didn't find it to be quite up to the level he put it at, but nevertheless it was a fascinating, and at times heart-stopping, read.

The book follows `Grey', a young British girl with too many social anxieties to mention, who travels to Tokyo to confront a Chinese professor (Shi Chongming) who, she believes, possesses a film of the Nanking massacre (where Japanese troops murdered thousands of Chinese civilians when they invaded the city).

The books is split between Grey's naration, and Chongming's war-era `journal' (which is written in such detail, one wonders where he found the time when he was weak from hunger and escaping with his wife from Nanking). The writing is suspenseful, but laboured in parts - Hayder tells a captivating story, and the twists are certainly suspenseful, but don't expect it to scale literary heights.

Would I recommend this? Oh yes - if you like chillers and thrillers, this will be right up your alley; and you may, like my brother, be touched by it. Just don't expect a classic.

I have read Hayder's other books with painful pleasure, but this newest release takes her writing to a completely different level. It is a dark tale of the walking wounded, obsession, and culture. Her characters are marvelously complex, and her writing is dark yet crystalline. Mo Hayder deserves to be among the best of our fiction writers. A chilling masterpiece.

Big time. I read Birdman and really liked it. Devil is a major disappointment. I felt NOTHING for the characters. Grey is totally unlikable, vague and totally implausible. The rest of the characters pretty much the same. The story line is boring and sooo s l o w. Save your money and don't waste your time on this one. It is like..who cares?

A masterpiece, plain and simple. Gray is a wonderful character whose motivations are as touching as they are disturbing. The ending is both shocking and moving. I've never read anything like it. Mo Hayder has become an instant favorite.

I have read the Cafferty series by this author and was expecting a police procedural/mystery along the same lines. Though disturbingly dark, the historical research seemed quite thorough, the characters were very engaging and the suspense made it difficult to put down. I'd love to see the author write more novels like this one.

With a great depth to the characters and a writing style that impresses, Mo Hayder has written a dark and sometime graphic novel that should impress all her fans.

An overall good story taking place in both 90's Tokyo and Nanking of '37.

Recommended.

Although the material is quite dark and disturbing, I found myself enthralled with the characters and plot. The story is told from the point of view of two people who could not be more different, but share similar dark secrets. Not for the faint of heart.

A brilliant book. A great storyline which develops and evolves into an ending that leaves you a little shocked yet satisfied with how it all comes together. The characters in this story are somewhat larger than life, encouraging your imagination to work overtime.

By far the best of Hayder's 3 books so far. Can't wait to read the next.

A disturbing experience. I found this novel to be a wonderfully creative work of authorship. The overly stereotypical characters certainly detract from the book's anticipated legacy, but the emotional weight of the story counterbalances and perhaps explains that weakness.

A terrible book. I gave up and abandoned it after 150 pages of its 400+ pages.

Most disappointed because I have read many good things about Mo Hayder and she was recommended by friends. But I just couldn't get into this book at all. A very boring read. The font size was also very small and difficult to read. That's why I love my Kindle -- you can increase the font size. If I'd got the KIndle version perhaps my opinion would be different, but I doubt it. Skip this one.

I will give her another try, but maybe one of the Jack Caffery series for which she is most famous. Hope it is better.

Come on......scrapings from a ...oops don't wanna give the "plot" away?! Why not try wheat grass if you are intent on prolonging your life. Better yet, a bit of exercise and a healthy appetite for good literature and history.

There's enough real horror artfully recounted without fanning the flames of existing xenophobia both within and outside of Japan. I would modestly suggest a reading of "The Knights of Bushido" by Lord Russel of Liverpool for an historic and well researched account of Japanese war atrocitites (gruesome enough without a shot glass of ......"). If it's well written edgy mystery set in Japan with some flair for language and plausability to boot that you're looking for, I'd place all bets on Natsuo Kirino, author of the suberbly crafted novel "Out".

On a final and wistful note, after I had forced myself to read this "page turner" while on a train in China, I purposely left it tucked in the seat back in front of me. After disembarking a well meaning fellow passeger chased after me on the platform, "your book sir!".