The Devil of Nanking: A Novel [Hardcover]

Mo Hayder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2005

With the redolent atmosphere of Ian Rankin and the spine-chilling characters of Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder's The Devil of Nanking, takes the reader on an electrifying literary ride from the palatial apartments of yakuza kingpins to deep inside the secret history of one of the twentieth century's most brutal events: the Nanking Massacre. A young Englishwoman obsessed with an indecipherable past, Grey comes to Tokyo seeking a lost piece of film footage of the notorious 1937 Nanking Massacre, footage some say never existed. Only one man can help Grey. A survivor of the massacre, he is now a visiting professor at a university in Tokyo. But he will have nothing to do with her. So Grey accepts a job in an upmarket nightspot, where a certain gangster may be the key to gaining the professor's trust. An old man in a wheelchair surrounded by a terrifying entourage, the gangster is rumored to rely on a mysterious elixir for his continued health. Taut, gritty, sexy, and harrowing, The Devil of Nanking is an incomparable literary thriller set in one of the world's most fascinating cities-Tokyo-from an internationally best-selling author.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From its start in 1937, as the Japanese overrun the Chinese port of Nanking and massacre hundreds of thousands, to its narrative core in 1990, as a disturbed young British woman who calls herself Grey searches for the hidden truths that made her the mentally fragile person she is, Hayder's third book (after 2002's The Treatment) is a thriller of rare art and gripping excitement. Hayder, one of the rising stars of British crime fiction, teaches at a university in Bath and has worked as a hostess in a Tokyo nightclub. Both experiences add to her book's unusually rich atmosphere. Grey, who lives on the fringes of the academic world, tries to find out in Tokyo whether a piece of 16mm film taken during the Nanking atrocities actually exists--and whether it will ease her pain. When an elderly Chinese professor, a survivor of Nanking, at first refuses to help her, she drifts into a well-paying job as a night club hostess. (Russian twin sisters Irina and Svetlana teach her the tricks of the trade. "You gotta look sophisticated," Svetlana tells her earnestly. "You wanna wear my belt, eh? My belt is gold. Black and gold nice!") Eventually, the story becomes a beautifully paced, three-way duel among an aged Japanese gangster who wants to live forever; the Chinese professor, with secrets too horrible to hide any longer; and Grey, a courageous young woman unlike any other heroine you're likely to find in a thriller.
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From Booklist

Seeking confirmation of an atrocity committed by Japanese soldiers during the 1937 invasion of Nanking, troubled young Englishwoman Grey Hutchins tracks down a Chinese survivor who might have film of the massacre. But when she finds Shi Chongming teaching at a Tokyo university, he offers no help--until Grey takes a job at a hostess club frequented by an old Yakuza don. Chongming, it turns out, needs access to the strange medicine the mobster takes to stave off death. If Grey can deliver the information he needs, Chongming promises, he will show her his secret film. Although the narrative--split between the professor's haunting 1937 diary and Grey's contemporary Tokyo journal--takes a while to pick up steam, it ends up delivering a potent punch. Hayder fancies she is withholding more plot twists than she actually does, but Grey and Chongming's affecting stories of weakness and loss redeemed by their obsessive quests for truth and justice make up for a twinned mystery that's not too difficult to dope out. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 363 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (March 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802117945
• ISBN-13: 978-0802117946
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #760,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Ignorance is not the same as insanity.", April 13, 2005

By 

Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Devil of Nanking: A Novel (Hardcover)

A disturbed, young British woman, known only as Grey, arrives in Tokyo after a long hospitalization in a psychiatric unit. She has been hoping for nine years to find a piece of film recording the Nanking Massacre in China by the Japanese in 1937, a massacre of 300,000 people, which the Japanese deny happened. Needing a very specific bit of information that she believes is in the film, Grey contacts Shi Chongming, an elderly Chinese professor at a Japanese university, whom she believes has the missing film. She eventually agrees to try to unearth information he wants about a life-saving medicine used by an ailing Japanese gangster in exchange for information about the Nanking film.

Grey is a fragile and interesting character, bearing both physical and emotional scars, and when she is accepted as a hostess at the "Some Like it Hot" nightclub, run by the unforgettable Strawberry Nakatani, who believes herself a Marilyn Monroe look-alike, she meets the ailing gangster, Junzo Fuyuki. Other intriguing peripheral characters add to the drama: Jason, an American with a pre-occupation with death and a sexual fetish for "weirdos" like Grey; a pair of Russian twins, who are also hostesses; and Ogawa, the transvestite nurse of the gangster, who lurks in the background and acts as an enforcer. The various settings, especially that of a falling-down house occupied by Grey, Jason, and the Russian twins, showcase the bizarre characters and their actions.

The point of view alternates between Grey, as she tries to gain control of her life by finding this mysterious film, and that of Shi Chongming, who recounts in painful detail his memories of the Japanese invasion of Nanking and the attempts that he and his wife Shujing make to to stay alive. The author's ability to present both internal action and external terror is admirable, creating both tension and heart-stopping suspense, though she does resort to obvious foreshadowing to keep the reader going: "I knew that the answer I wanted was very nearby," for example, and "I was sure, without knowing why, that just behind those blinds...."

The plot and characters are intriguing for the first two-thirds of the book. Then, as the exact nature of Grey's quest on behalf of Shi Chongming becomes clearer, the plot veers into stomach-turning sadism and perversion. Sensational deaths and ankle-deep gore increase as Grey's shocking "crime," Fuyuki's pathology, and Shi Chongming's "sin" come together in dramatic fashion. Not for the faint of heart, this pop novel is nightmare-inducing, filled with pathological behavior and grotesque deaths, minutely described. (3.5 stars). Mary Whipple

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well written, slightly off beat drama/detective story, March 27, 2005

By 

Jared M (New Zealand) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil of Nanking: A Novel (Hardcover)

"The Devil of Nanking", published as "Toyko" in some countries, is not your typical novel. For a start, the heroine is flawed with some mental and physical scars. Grey, the heroine, is obsessed with finding a film on which horrific footage of the Nanking massacres exist. As we find out during the course of the book, for Grey this is a particularly personal quest.

During her efforts to find and view the film, we are taken through 1990 Tokyo, with a well written cast. Jason the weird guy, the Russian girls, the Chinese professor who witnessed the crimes perpetrated in Nanking, and a mysterious Japanese gangster and his "Nurse", although only a couple of these are sketched out in great detail. The author isn't afraid to leave certain elements and characters of the story relatively vague, which makes for a more mysterious and dark feel to the story.

"The Devil of Nanking" is very well written, the author brings to life both the bright lights of 1990 Tokyo (her own experiences of night clubs in Tokyo no doubt proved useful material to draw upon in the writing of this novel) as well as the desperate dark period of December 1937 in Nanking. At the conclusion of the book, despite the revelation of what is revealed on the film (which I actually thought was fairly well signposted) Grey seeks and ultimately finds, you are left in an almost contemplative mood. I haven't read many books that have left me like that.

I don't normally read fiction, but I have developed a fascination with East Asia, having lived in Korea and visited both Japan and China, which attracted me to the book. I was not disappointed. The Devil of Nanking is defintely worth a read. Highly recommended, especially if you like more unusual novels and settings.

Postscript: If you are after some historical background information to the Nanking massacre, I recommend "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang for a well written but controversial account (judging from the number of reviews for the book on Amazon) of the horrors that occurred in Nanking December 1937.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Horrible Yet Fascinating, April 24, 2005

By 

A Discerning Reader (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil of Nanking: A Novel (Hardcover)

Mo Hayder does not have much in the way of formal schooling, but she has become an accomplished storyteller with a better-than-average writing skill. This novel is comprised of two stories intertwined to make a shocking whole. First and foremost, Hayder provides a realistic and accurate picture of what the IJA's (Imperial Japanese Army) destruction of Nanking, China must have been like.

Then the second story: Gray is a young woman who grew up only reading books--her parents did not have a television, nor were there other young people around while Gray was a child. She was reared on books; and somehow, a rare and terrifying account of Japan's genocide in Nanking comes under her intelligent adolescent scrutiny.

She becomes obsessed with viewing a film that shows torture and murder perpetuated by a perverse monster in the IJA--the Devil of Nanking. She finds help in Tokyo from the elderly man who brought the film back from China back in late 1937. Eventually, we as readers get the portrayal of Nanking's destruction through snippets from the elderly man's journal as well as by information Gray gleans while privately investigating as a "hostess" in a Tokyo nightclub.

This was well worth reading. I miss Jack Cafferty, the detective who stars in her first two novels (Birdman and Treatment) but Mo Hayder is not an author to be ignored. Her works are shocking and unique, and they deserve attention from anyone with the courage to stomach their contents.