Customer Reviews

December 6: A Novel

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

Martin Cruz Smith is one of the most the most skillful and versatile writers of contemporary fiction. His work is painfully researched (accounting for the relatively short list of published works) and beautifully written. December 6 is no exception, as Smith again demonstrates the range of his talents, this time setting the story in 1941 Tokyo. He spins the unusual story of Harry Niles, the son of American missionaries stationed in Japan. Alienated from his parents as they are off proselytizing in rural Japan, Harry is left to grow up on the streets of Tokyo. Much more Japanese in culture and beliefs than American, the enigmatic Niles, now an adult Tokyo nightclub owner, finds himself in a precarious situation on the eve of the Pacific World War II.

Give Smith credit for creativity: this is certainly an unusual, if not bizarre, subject for a story. Harry Niles is a mysterious main character. Accepted fully by neither western nor eastern cultures, perpetually only a step ahead of (or behind) the law, the reader never knows exactly where to categorize Niles: hero, spy, traitor, patriot?. Supporting characters are likewise complex and unable to be easily quantified. Michiko, Harrys mistress: the cool and aloof juke-box jockey, yet also the submissive geisha. Ishigami, the sword-yielding samurai demon with a uniquely Japanese penchant for both honor and terror. Smith adroitly blends Japanese tradition in the background, avoiding the tendancy of many western authors writing of Japan to allow the culture to overshadow the story. The imminent war is portrayed from a uniquely Japanese, and fatalistic, perspective. Like all of Smiths novels, the characters and events are intricately woven in a complex fabric of intrigue and suspense, leading to a surreal, nearly mystical, climax.

What December 6 lacks in sheer thrills and fast action of Gorky Park is compensated by the intelligent and convoluted story line and though-provoking characters. As with all of Smiths novels, December 6 leaves the reader anxiously awaiting his next effort.

This is a most unusual historical novel, an espionage thriller of sorts, but much more. Martin Cruz Smith's hero, Harry Niles, is even more unique then the tale he tells - the story of Japan on the eve of Pearl Harbor. The perspective is Japanese, interpreted for us by a chameleon.

Harry Niles grew up in Japan, the son of American Baptist missionaries, zealous in their determination to bring the light of God to the Japanese. Harry's Uncle Orin, a devout alcoholic, baby-sat him as his parents wandered the country spreading the Word, with no knowledge of the Japanese language, or culture, and no desire to learn. The couple saw Harry as a "sort of amphibian, neither honest, nor stupid, neither adult nor innocent, neither American nor Japanese." And Harry, who ran wild in the streets of Tokyo, at home in the shady underworld, dance halls, and back-room card games, learned early to survive well in this environment - and became a master of the "artful scam." He survived Japanese school, where he was the only "gaijin," (foreigner), forever playing the Indian to the Japanese schoolboys' cowboy...or samurai, as it were. He also learned the aesthetics of Shinto, which he was more comfortable with than his parent's Christianity; as well as Japanese ethics, their world view in general, their take on international politics, etc..

The narrative switches back and forth between Harry's adolescence, and his present life, in early December, 1941. He owns the "Happy Paris," an American jazz bar, where a juke box provides the music, and his Japanese Communist lover, Michiko, selects the tunes. He is a con man with a heart of gold. Niles has more than an inkling that the Japanese are about to attack Hawaii - he is a man with many sources, and knows how to do simple addition. And 2+2 = Pearl Harbor. He needs to be on the last flight out of the country - otherwise the consequences won't be pretty. Japanese military and intelligence officials don't particularly care for him, and neither do the Americans, nor the Brits, for that matter. His last days in Japan, before the war, are filled with intrigue, suspense and murder.

Cruz Smith writes a tight, taut narrative, as always. He is a master at building suspense, in a real life drama that is already fraught with tension. His research is impeccable and I learned much while enjoying the read. Descriptions of a meeting of the elite Chrysanthemum Club, where Harry tells the Japanese version of the upcoming hostilities, are both hilarious and informative; as is the scene where Harry plays catch with the Japanese Giants' baseball team. One minute you're laughing, the next you're biting your nails.

Harry Niles is Smith's real masterpiece, however. Niles breathes life into every event and person that surround him. He is a perfect anti-hero on the surface. He is well aware of the multitude of contradictions that make-up his persona, and accepts them, even enjoys them, with a dark, sardonic humor. The scam has a whole new meaning in Harry's hands - his cons can cause war! Yet he is also a decent and kind man. Just beneath the surface, there exists the man who saved many Chinese lives in Japan's brutal rape of Nanking. And he continues to help both friends and strangers up until the novel's last page. Harry just doesn't want anyone to know. He doesn't want to be anyone's hero.

This is one of Martin Cruz Smith's best works. The historical aspect and original point of view make it 5 Stars all the way!

JANA

You will never think about Pearl Harbor and December 7, 1941 in quite the same way after you read December 6. You will also have a new appreciation of the gap between an embassy staff trying to understand the surface of a culture and the depth of experience and knowledge that is required to begin to truly understand another society.

In fact, this book is as useful in helping to understand Japan in 1941 as it is for trying to understand our current challenge in dealing with the reactionary Wahhabi sect of Islam, the system of terror based on religious belief, and the isolation of Hezballah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda from the West. The core principle that language is only the first of many cultural differences is the key to understanding the challenge facing any diplomat or intelligence agent trying to penetrate and predict a truly different society.

Martin Cruz Smith has created an American missionary's son who is as vivid and believable as any of the Russians in his Gorky Park series. Smith suggests that a young man who had grown up inside Japanese culture with Japanese playmates and fluency in the Japanese language would have a completely different understanding of the culture than the American embassy or missionaries who came as outsiders to change it rather than understand it.

Smith creates an almost Humphrey Bogart like character in an almost Casablanca scene but with distinctly Japanese differences. He tells the story of a culture that believes in seppuku (ceremonial suicide), a culture which saw everyone not Japanese as not quite human (and therefore saw the killing of hundreds of thousands of Chinese as an event not worth noticing), and a culture which felt its very life being suffocated by the huge presence of the Americans across the Pacific and their potential ability to strangle Japanese society by cutting off the flow of oil. This is a culture very unlike Vichy, France and even more alien than the Gestapo and the Third Reich.

You will find the personalities, the plot, and the scenes believable, engaging, and intriguing. Once started this is not a book you will want to put down.

I found the book riveting from page one. It works on so many levels, from its atmospheric setting in Japan to its exciting story lines, set both in the childhood past of American Harry Niles and the present, the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the intriguing characters in the novel are what drive the story. Harry Niles is by far one of the most interesting characters I've encountered lately. So is his Japanese mistress, the unpredictable and scary Michiko.

One of the most suspensful and delicious scenes in the novel takes place in a Willow House, where Harry is forced to make small talk and observe Japanese decorum while knowing he has just minutes to live. He has been lured to the Willow House by his lover, at first unrecognized because of her geisha makeup and demeanor. There, he encounters bitter enemy, Ishigami, the master swordsman who has sworn to behead him. Ishigami is like a cat playing with the mouse before pouncing. The reader cannot help but wonder throughout the book how Harry will survive.

I read a huge number of books, both fiction and non, and this one is a gem. (Another great novel set around the time of WWII is Joseph Kanon's "The Good German"). December 6 is one of the few books that I will actually go back and reread, slowly, to figure out how the author managed to put it all together.

Finally, as a response to the reader who claimed he was not an old white man and why should this book be on his "must read" list, I am not an old white man either. If a reviewer is going to give one star and a grumpy one-liner, but no concrete criticisms at all, his review enlightens no one.

I resisted the characterization of Harry Niles as Rick Blaine and still to some extent continue to do so. He's more a character out of Hemingway, living in Paris or London or Madrid after the First World War. And like the Hemingway men, tragically flawed at several things save survival. For Harry is really the best at surviving.

Additionally I mistook the juxtaposition of the tales of Harry the scoundrel adult bar owner and Harry, the Charles Dickens street urchin as being whimsical at best, boring at worst. I was mistaken and seeing what Harry is and then seeing how he got there was fascinating and fulfilling.

This book grows on you, slowly at first, then by leaps and bounds. It is a mystery, romance, war story and to be truthful it went from "interesting" to "riveting" in about 200 pages.

Like all Cruz-Smith exploits, it is both well written while at the same time being very well researched. Other reviewers have given the plot so let me just leave you with this. In a strange (still) land at a time no one is too certain about what really went on, Cruz-Smith makes you feel at home. Larry Scantlebury. 5 stars.

The story is set in Tokyo on December 6, 1941. Harry Niles owns the Happy Paris saloon in the Asakusa district, a nightless city where sheltered libidos roam unfettered. Harry learned to adapt early in life growing up as the gaifin son of American missionaries in post WWI Japan. In flashbacks we see how much Harry will take and improvise to avoid submitting when his boyhood "friends" make him the target of their samurai games.

The same friends are in his life on December 6th": Hajimai, a soldier about to ship out and Gen, an aide to Admiral Yamomoto who recognizes and uses the talents of Harry the businessman. They are hooked up with Col. Ishigami, a sadistic veteran of the rape of Nanking who is particularly good at beheading people with his saber.

While trying to wrap things up over the weekend and make the Monday morning clipper flight to Hong Kong, Harry will confirm his suspicions that Pearl Harbor is to be attacked. Again through flashbacks we learn how powerbrokers on both sides of the coming conflict know Harry and why he knows things they would like to know. His relationship with Michiko, the part Communist part geisha "Record Girl" who tends the Happy Paris jukebox, and efforts to stay out from under Ishigami's sword are part of a pace that keeps you excited and surprised by what happens next.

The ending is jst plain phenomenal. Smith puts his hero in a box he'll never get out of. Then ... I'll say no more except that you'll want to experience the finale for yourself.

P.S. Smith has created his best ever character in Harry Niles, and John Slattery (narrator of the audiobook) captures Harry's personality perfectly with a comfortable, believable delivery of the con man's lines combined with unobtrusive yet distinct voices and accents that set Harry apart from the rest of the cast. I hope there's a movie and Slattery gets the part.

There are few thriller writers that can evoke a place and time like Smith. When you hear about an author's exhaustive research to recreate not just the look but the experience of a place this is yet another good example of his talent as a writer. Just the choice of pre-Pearl Harbor Tokoyo is original. The character of Harry Niles owes alot to Casablanca's Rick Blaine and no doubt Smith had him in mind when writing. He handles the anti-hero well, slowly giving a piece by piece back story of why the reader should sympathize and eventually even root for Harry. That's hard to do as a writer, but Smith frequently chooses memorable main characters (Arkady of Gorky Park, Polar Star, Red Square and Havanna Bay fame is his best example)that are a bit on the dark side. The book is fairly fast paced. The introduction of an honorable but homicidal samauri from Harry's past raises the book to a new level of suspense. Even the descriptions of the ritualistic lopping of heads is fascinating. The love story angle is unconventional and Smith handles Harry's thoughts on the relationship perfectly. As with all his thrillers, the ending is wonderfully tense and unexpected. This is a "downward spiral" type plot where the reader knows the main character is heading deeper and deeper into trouble as things close in around him. But, Smith keeps the twists and rich descriptions at a level where the reader stays with him. December 6 is not as strong as Gorky Park or Rose, the latter being the high point with its totally original setting and beautiful writing, but from an always reliable writer it is strong stuff. How many writers are as reliably entertaining as Martin Cruz Smith: not many.

Martin Cruz Smith has set his newest novel, DECEMBER 6, in Japan on the eve of Pearl Harbor. He tells the story of Harry Niles, the American son of missionaries who left him to grow up on the streets of Tokyo. Now a 30-year-old man, Harry owns the Happy Paris, a tearoom he transformed into a "...bar stocked with scotch instead of sake and a red neon sign...," in Tokyo's "Azakuza" district. The saloon is a hangout for Western journalists, a meeting place for expatriates, and a watering hole for those on the move through Japan.

Harry, had a tough time growing up in the "Hell's Kitchen" area of Tokyo. Always a gaigin (a foreigner) among his schoolmates, he was never really accepted and was the target of the samurai and Shinto games they played. He calls himself a philosopher and says, "My talent is speaking more Japanese than most Americans and more English than most Japanese. Big deal."

He is neither a Westerner nor is he Japanese. But Harry is an expert con man. He has his own business, he is part of a network of acquaintances and loves his mistress, Michiko. His life is full, and he is as content as anyone who lives the nightlife on the fringes of any society.

Everyone Harry knows believes that Japan and the United States will go to war. The only question for them in December, 1941 is when. And although Harry thinks he has a plan to prevent an attack by the Japanese on Americans, he also has a ticket in his pocket for the last plane out of Tokyo. "Well, it may be petty of me," Harry declares, "but I still want to come out of this war alive."

In alternating narratives of Harry the boy juxtaposed against Harry the club owner, Smith paints an extraordinary picture of life in Japan before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and captures the essence of that strange, exotic country on the brink of war. For the verisimilitude of DECEMBER 6 Smith says, "I was able to visit Japan with a guy I met who lived there during the time of the story...[and for his research he] reads newspapers of the time and memoirs of people who lived through the era [he is] writing about."

Smith lives up to his reputation for presenting readers finely wrought suspense-thrillers. And, in DECEMBER 6, he goes over the top. His deft interweaving of an historical abomination with the romantic tale of a man without a country is both moving and thought provoking.

Fans and newcomers to Smith's work will not be disappointed in this, his best novel to date.

--- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum

I will always gladly pick up anything new from Martin Cruz Smith, as he has never really disappointed me yet. His Arkady Renko novels (including the classic Gorky Park, and fascinating but convoluted Havana Bay) have gotten plenty of praise, and I also loved Rose. Perhaps more than anything, Smith is known for painstaking research. He developed a wonderful setting for each of his densely-plotted books. Moscow in winter, a North Sea fishing boat, a grimy English mining town, and tropical Havana all come alive in the pages of Martin Cruz Smith novels.

In December 6, he turns his trained eye upon Japan at the outbreak of WW II, and his character Harry Niles will draw inevitable parallels to Bogart's Rick of Casablanca fame. Niles is a nightclub owner as well, and in a society where children aspire at an early age to "die for the emperor" Niles is always reminded that he is an outsider, or a "gaijin", even among a society he loves. He senses war about to break out, has a seat on the proverbial "last plane out", but immerses himself in a ruse designed to try and trick the Japanese authorities into calling off the attack which he believes will doom the empire. We all know the attack takes place, and the outcome (some here have criticized Smith for making his characters so sure of the exact outcome of the war on the day it breaks out), but how it happens still holds your interest throughout the novel.

After reading a Martin Cruz Smith novel, and this one is no exception, you remember the setting, and you vividly remember certain scenes (a flashback to Nanking involving a pivotal conflict with a fanatical general stick in my head), but you remember little about the various twists and turns of the plot. The tea houses, nightclubs and palaces of Tokyo come alive in his descriptions. I was a little disappointed in the ending, as Smith is not a writer who likes to tie up everything with a bow at the end, but I still recommend the book as a great historical glimpse at a fascinating culture swept up in the hysteria of the war. He made me care about the characters, including Harry and his pragmatic mistress Michiko. 5 stars, maybe 4 1/2 if Amazon let me, but a fast-paced and enjoyable read.

Harry Niles, the son of white missionaries to Japan, was raised by a native nurse and has remained in Japan all his life, more Japanese than American. Early December, 1941, finds him in Tokyo just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, running the Happy Paris club and struggling to maintain his relationship with his beautiful and emotional mistress, Michiko, who also works in the club, playing the juke box. With talk of war everywhere, Harry is intent on leaving. But how? And can he, using his cunning and knowledge of politics, con his adopted country out of fatal combat with the powerful America? And escape the honor bound military man, Ishigami, who's stalking him with a mind poisoned by past wrongs and a sword bent on revenge?

While DECEMBER 6 does not live up to GORKY PARK, and while Harry Niles is no match for Arkady Renko, Martin Cruz Smith's latest effort is stamped with his distinctive use of details. His prose is clean and reflective, never coarse or unfinished or abrasive. The plot is not linear but rather slips back and forth, weaving time, place, and characters into a novel that some will find confusing, others beautiful.

Me, I ended up somewhere between confused and awed. Smith's touch is magic, but the sheer volume of research included in DECEMBER 6 made it at times read more like a school paper than a novel. One paragraph, which detailed some gruesome beheadings, managed to stretch more than two pages. Plus, during some points Harry Niles came across as unemotional and detached, although I was aware of churning undercurrents. The dialogue disappointed me as well. Still, I felt the ending was a fitting finale to an intriguing story of love, violence, and politics.

A newcomer to Smith's writing may be overwhelmed by this fact packed thriller, but Smith's fans, as well as anyone interested in wartime Japan, will find DECEMBER 6 absorbing and thought provoking.