Tokyo Year Zero

From “British crime fiction’s most exciting new voice in decades” (GQ) comes an electrifying novel that revisits a series of shocking crimes committed in post–World War II, bombed-out, American-occupied Tokyo.

On August 15, 1946—the first anniversary of the Japanese surrender—the partially decomposed, raped, and strangled bodies of two women are found in Shiba Park. More murders will soon be uncovered: women killed in the same way, and, it becomes clear, by the same hand.

Narrated by the irreverent, despairing yet determined Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Tokyo Year Zero tells a fictionalized story of the real-life hunt for “the Japanese Bluebeard”—a decorated Imperial soldier who raped and murdered at least ten women amid the bleak turmoil of post-war Japan (“one huge sea of displaced persons . . . one minute here and one minute gone”). And it is the story of Detective Minami: chasing down, and haunted by, memories of atrocities that he can no longer explain or forgive.

Unblinking in its vision of a nation in a chaotic, hellish period in its history; of the rawness of emotion left in the wake of war; and of the moral and psychological corruption engendered by its aftermath—Tokyo Year Zero is unforgettable, a darkly lyrical and stunningly original crime novel.