Big Motorcycle: A Tokyo Story [Paperback]

F. J. Logan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 2003

Fussy Frank Donner is a Tokyo guy. A Viet-vet and journalist wanna-be,he worries about all of the above. Donner and Buddy Nakamura are jogging along, and baby comesscreaming over a railing then down, down, down-and into Donner'sarms. The baby's parents have just been hacked to pieces by a right-winger on a glory trip. Donner saves her, he's a hero. Next day, Donner loses her, he's an idiot-as his wife points out to him, just before she too dies. And the kidnapper, on a tight Tokyo schedule, plans to save the baby too, from all the horrors of life. Tokyo bills itself as 'the safest major city in the world,' but to believe that you'd have to overlook a lot of drunks, punks, rapists, chemically deranged truckers and bikers, homicidal perverts, religious genocide squads, subway slashers, kindergarten butchers, gradeschool peer-decapitators, ritual cannibals, gangsters, anarcho-terrorists, and pachinko mamas. And you'd have to ignore the thick, carcinogenic tobacco-haze that covers the whole city; the earthquakes, typhoons, and tidal waves; and the occasional batch of really bad sushi. Big Motorcycle takes you on a wild ride through all of this and more, to and fro across Southeast Asia, back and forth over the past eighty-five years, through two major wars, along the meanest streets and alleys, behind the scenes, under the illusions, and into the heart of that weirdest of all major cities, Tokyo.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

F.J. Logan has been a Tokyo-based journalist for seventeen years. He has written for most of the major serial publications on the Pacific Rim, including Kyoto Journal, East West Magazine of Hawaii, and Tokyo Journal. His books include The Point Is the Point and Japan Fan. Mr. Logan lives with his family in Kanagawa, Japan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 668 pages
• Publisher: AuthorHouse (May 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1403398291
• ISBN-13: 978-1403398291
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,104,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Motorcycle is a Fast Ride, October 10, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Big Motorcycle: A Tokyo Story (Paperback)

Big Motorcycle is a frenetic ride into the weirdness of Tokyo that combines some of the post industrial hipness of William Gibson with the plotting intricacies of Elmore Leonard-all at a pace that makes Run, Lola Run seem like a stroll in the park. F.X. Donner, Viet Nam vet and former P.O.W., now a middle aged gaijin professor of English comp in Tokyo, has his generally sedate, mildly angst ridden life blasted into hyperdrive when he reflexively performs an act of heroism by catching a falling baby. From that point on, Donner finds himself drawn into the Tokyo underbelly of yakuza, religious cults, right wing and left wing revolutionaries, pop culture entrepreneurs, and a very disturbing serial killer. As the action races along, the individual weirdness converges in bang up race to stop a killer. Big Motorcycle is ghastly, cool, fast paced, exciting and...funny.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sleeper of the Year, October 8, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Big Motorcycle: A Tokyo Story (Paperback)

This novel has the slick plotting of John Sandford, the wild humor of Carl Hiassen, the erudition of David Foster Wallace, and the brutal bite of James Ellroy. It's a story of Tokyo, as the sub-title suggests, but Tokyo is a city of foreigners and natives trying to come to terms with each other. So any story of post-WWII Tokyo is a story of the world. Great characters in this book, terrific dialogue. One of the dust jacket reviews said simply, "Ride this Motorcycle." Exactly: this novel is the sleeper of the year.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reads like a Coen movie, October 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Big Motorcycle: A Tokyo Story (Paperback)

Reads like a Coen Brothers movie. Humor with razor edges. Inadvertent violence mixed with good intentions. Big City weirdness, where the fringe jaggedly intrudes on the norm. But uniquely Tokyo - a Möbius strip of cute and creepy. Darkly comic. Funny stuff. Except for the villain; Logan doesn't invent a new monster, just chillingly describes the diminutive one that exists among us.