Sunday, June 22, 2025

REVIEW: Three Assassins (book) by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Sam Malissa

Three Assassins is a Japanese thriller. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Suzuki is an ordinary man seeking vengeance for his wife, who was murdered by a drunk driver. The driver was the son of Mr. Terahara, the man in charge of a criminal gang called Fräulein. The best Suzuki could come up with was to infiltrate Fräulein and somehow get close enough to Mr. Terahara's son in order to kill him. Unfortunately, getting into Fräulein has involved helping the gang sell drugs to young women. If that wasn't bad enough, now he's being asked to kill someone in order to prove his loyalty to the gang. He's not sure he can bring himself to go that far.

When an assassin known as the Pusher kills Mr. Terahara's son right in front of Suzuki's eyes, he's suddenly drawn even further into a world of almost supernaturally talented assassins. The Pusher kills his victims by pushing them into oncoming traffic and then slipping away unnoticed. The Whale convinces his victims to take their own lives, using only his words and unnerving gaze. The Cicada is a knife expert capable of ruthlessly killing whole families. 

Can a man like Suzuki, a former teacher, somehow navigate this world and find a way out, or will he end up as dead as any of the assassins' other victims?

This was interesting, strange, and, in the end, bewildering. There were a bunch of moving pieces - Suzuki, looking for the Pusher and then fretting over what the gang will do to the man and his family once he finds them; Hiyoko, Suzuki's boss in the gang, trying to track Suzuki and the Pusher down; the Whale, who has started to hallucinate visions of his former victims; and Cicada, who yearns for a bit more power and freedom and whose path has just crossed with the Whale's.

I didn't really know what to expect when I started this. There are elements of black comedy, and it seemed like no one could go anywhere without stumbling across a killer with a nickname and slick reputation. Even Cicada, who seemed more small-time compared to the Pusher and the Whale, was practically unstoppable - aside from Suzuki, who really was just an ordinary guy who'd gotten himself in too deep, these characters were all dangerous and fearless. 

While I knew there had to be more going on than Suzuki realized, somehow the one revelation near the end still took me by surprise. 

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