Book Review: Another novel from Kotaro Isaka that's fit for the silver screen

Author Kotaro Isaka Picture: Osamu Hoshikawa

• Three Assassins
• Kotaro Isaka
• Penguin Books, €15

The latest from Kotaro Isaka, Three Assassins pitches us straight into the Japanese underworld and more specifically, the grisly business of hired killers, seemingly forever in competition with each other for hit jobs. 

In the middle of all this is Suzuki, a hapless widower whose wife was casually killed by the joyriding son of a criminal kingpin. In a not-so-subtle move, he joins the same criminal network as a gopher, aiming for direct revenge but quickly finding himself waist-deep in all kinds of unpleasantness, no direction home, and apparently, no way out, until the fates conspire.

Personal disclosure: crime fiction isn’t my number one passion. I remain unmoved by artful depictions of blood and gore. And Three Assassins has its fair share, particularly when the titular killers get busy with their various targets, moving unknowingly but inexorably towards each other. Yet there is something gruesomely absorbing about the neon-lit action in Three Assassins. 

Isaka flips between characters with each chapter, from the flailing Suzuki to the particularly odious Cicada, and the Whale, a brooding presence who increasingly sees the ghosts of those he has killed, or has convinced to take their own lives. All three, in their own way, are looking for a near-mythical figure known as the Pusher, who apparently takes out his prey by bumping them into oncoming traffic.

Isaka has been supremely successful since his breakthrough novel Jūryoku Piero almost two decades ago, and this summer will see a Hollywood version of his book “Bullet Train”, starring Brad Pitt. His writing style is sharp, and the action is constant. His descriptions of the Japanese city by night, its ragged edges, ring true. 

Yet Three Assassins is not without its flaws. There are twists and turns, but also quite a lot of dialogue - particularly towards the end of the book - that reads as entirely expository, rather than working as a stunning plot reveal. 

Since the characters have relatively little by way of backstory, they seem shallow, even as killers for hire. The Whale’s ghostly visions are a way around this, presenting his own mental collapse as the harvest of his past killings, and even Cicada seems to have some sort of moral reckoning, although given his psychopathic nature, it seems a little half-hearted.

Suzuki is the world-be moral centre of the book, and Isaka does switch the focus to his own moral culpability in this horrible netherworld. Just because Suzuki was grievously wronged, is it ok to seek revenge in a way which indirectly contributes to other people falling victim? By joining the enemy of everything his late wife stood for, is he really doing right by her memory, even as he seeks his own Old Testament form of retribution?

But this aspect, like much of the action, flies by. By the end of Three Assassins we are left with a perfectly serviceable crime thriller, ripe for the movie treatment, but a little like the trains Suzuki watches whizz by him, it's all gone in a flash.