Kulturka

Tokyo

Having written just two previous novels, Mo Hayder already has a reputation for writing fast-paced, intelligent thrillers. Tokyo is no exception. For the first time, Hayder sets her novel on foreign soil, although her main narrator, the weird ''Grey'' whose shadowy past is never detailed in full, is English. Grey has an obsession with the infamous Nanking Massacre of 1937. She tracks down a Chin ese professor working in Tokyo who may be able to help her find a piece of film that records the atrocities that happened at the han ds of the Japanese. But when Shi Chongming meets her he denies all knowledge of the film, claiming that it does not exist. Grey, who is annoyingly childlike and frustratingly naive throughout this entire novel, is unconvinced.

• author: Mo Hayder