This was published 24 years ago, and yet I only came across it earlier this month at the neighbor’s little free library.
What a find.
Harry Niles is every bit as fascinating a fictional character as Smith’s best-known protagonist, Arkady Renko — the central character of “Gorky Park,” Smith’s most famous work (with a fine film adaptation starring William Hurt).
Niles is the son of American missionaries in post-World War I Japan. Largely abandoned by his parents to the care of an uncle in Tokyo while they traveled the countryside saving souls, he is raised as a Japanese boy — although never accepted as one by his playmates or Japanese society.
As Japan’s invasion in China rages on, a grown-up Harry runs an American-themed nightclub in Tokyo — think Rick’s Café from “Casablanca.” The United States’ oil embargo against Japan is causing real hardship to the economy, as well as wounding national pride, and Harry — a natural born con man — finds himself working several angles trying to survive while balancing his dual loyalties to his native country and the only one he really knows.
As his greatest con begins to fray, with unintended consequences Harry never dreamt would occur, the novel’s closing act is a fast-paced crescendo of chases, tense confrontations, and angry lovers.
Smith has created a deft blending of the spy novel and the whodunit mystery with “December 6.” Maybe more impressively, he has created a real sense of place in Tokyo circa 1940. Just as he did with Soviet-era Moscow, Smith doesn’t so much explain or illustrate pre-war Tokyo as he does simply place us on its streets, among its people.
Like “Gorky Park,” this has all the elements of a tremendous film script — and think what a relief it would be to not have another superhero movie or remake.
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