The Devil of Nanking

Horror novels don’t normally actually frighten me. This one was different. It is brilliantly written and will have you almost literally on the edge of your seat in suspense- especially since it’s full of plot twists and nothing is predictable or formulaic about this tale. I won’t give anything away because you MUST read this. You could read this in a sports stadium in broad daylight and still be scared- no exaggeration! Do yourself a favor and read it asap.

Tokyo is an eerie thriller from English author Mo Hayder. 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 r

Before I bought it, I didn't know Mo Hayder was a female author, which usually makes a diffence to me. This novel made for compelling reading. I enjoyed the pacing, characters, and mood. I will read more Mo Hayder.

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.

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 fo

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.