Zero (1988)

Michael Doss is an American who despite having studied and trained in martial arts in Japan is living a quiet life in Paris until his father is apparently killed by a ruthless, faceless Japanese assassin called Zero in Hawaii. When Michael's sister is kidnapped he travels to Hawaii to try and uncover the truth behind his father's life and murder only to be drawn into the murky waters of international espionage involving a Japanese crime gang, (a Yakuza), America and Russia. Whilst in Hawaii he meets a beautiful and able Japanese woman whom he falls in love with but on whose side is she really on?

A number of years ago I had a spell of reading books by this author and others of a similar ilk captivated as I was by the mysterious Far East. However, I generally only make sporadic forays into this genre these days.

This is a fairly typical action thriller involving ninjas, Russian spies, manipulative bureaucrats and a nuclear bomb. There are almost two parallel stories here spaced some 40 years apart. One set in Tokyo shortly after the end of WWII involving Michael's father Philip and one set in the mid 1980's involving the son. The pace of the narrative is fairly breathless, the sex and violence scenes are pretty graphic. In truth this is all very male-orientated unsurprisingly as no doubt that is intended target audience. The women inside were generally seen on one hand as being sexy whilst on the other wanting to be male.

On the whole I found the various twists and turns largely predictable, so much so that I had the final one worked out fairly early on in the story. I also found the ending a bit of a let down. The Yakuza plot fairly petered out without a real set-piece finale. Also I felt that Philip's wife and Michael's mother, Lillian, was rather poorly treated. Lillian like Philip cheated on her spouse and shared intelligence with a foreign agent but whereas Philip in the end seems to have been welcomed back into the bosom of his family she was left adrift and abandoned which seems pretty harsh.

When all said and done I cannot in truth say that I disliked this book (I am male after all). It is nice occasionally to be able to just switch off and disappear into another world but ultimately it is not a book that will live long in the memory or one that I will want to revisit. ( )

A complicated tale of an artist with training in martial arts becoming caught up in a plot to revive militaristic Japan by ultra-nationalists aided somehow by the Yakuza. Michael Doss hunts down the Jiban which killed his father, uncertain of who he can depend on and seeking out an assassin named Zero. Dense but reads very well. Lustbader has also done a new Bourne novel. ( )

NIL

Although American painter Michael Doss has been schooled in the ancient ways of the warrior, he leads a quiet life. Until the tragic death of his father ignites the warrior spirit in his blood that will not be quenched until he uncovers the secret of his father's enigmatic life. His journey plunges him into a dangerous underworld, where he finds himself in lethal combat with a sinister Japanese organization that is bent on destroying the United States through global economic chaos. Doss is trapped. His only chance for survival is a final confrontation, face to face, with the vile assassin behind it all, Zero

Surprisingly dense and interesting mix of history, economics, politics and a very obvious love for Japanese culture. ( )