#43: The Kingdom by Fuminori Nakamura

In Tokyo, a young woman works for a shadowy crime gang, luring businessmen and then getting compromising photos of them; when a rival gang makes an appearance, she plays a dangerous game pitting one against the other in Fuminori Nakamura's The Kingdom.

On the surface, this is a hard-boiled noir in the vein of Red Harvest (which begat Yojimbo, which begat A Fistful of Dollars, and on and on).  But this is Nakamura, whose novels ooze and seep, creep and crawl, creating high levels of dread.  Grinding, inescapable fate of the type Cornell Woolrich ate for breakfast is the standard fare.

Nakamura's novels are unsettling, to say the least, often with uncomfortable subject matter, but if you are interested in going down an inky-black road The Kingdom may be his most accessible novel that I've read to date.

I checked this out from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana and read it quickly.

#16: The Gun by Fuminori Nakamura

A college student finds a gun at what looks like the scene of a suicide attempt, and rather than calling the police becomes morbidly fascinated with owning the weapon in Fuminori Nakamura's creepy novel The Gun.

I have read several novels by Nakamura and find him to be adept at getting under your skin with unsettling characters and situations.  The Gun isn't so much a mystery or thriller as it is a skin-crawling character study about a young man slowly unraveling, as he fantasizes about murdering various people and becomes more distant from friends and the normal world.

Nakamura's disturbing narratives aren't for everyone, but he is an adept writer and storyteller for those looking for inky-black tales.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond Indiana and read it quickly.

#35: Last Winter, We Parted by Fuminori Nakamura

A journalist with a hidden agenda intends to write a book about why a popular photographer burned two women to death, but gets more than he bargained for in Last Winter, We Parted by Fuminori Nakamura.

This skin-crawling noir is written in an interesting, fragmentary style which includes pieces of the journalist's novel as well as other accounts of the story told from various angles.  But it is loaded with creepy characters, where every man has a secret fetish and every woman is an evil temptress.

Nakamura's novel The Thief, which I earlier read and enjoyed, also showed the sweating, seeping underbelly of Tokyo, but the author turns it up a notch in this one.  A greasy palette of tastes from sex dolls to S&M to implied incest is on display.

I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library and found it to be a good read, but for darker tastes.

#19: The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

A Tokyo pickpocket gets involved in a gang of thieves to help an old friend and mentor, not realizing the life-and-death stakes at hand, in Fuminori Nakamura's creepy noir The Thief.  Along the way he ends up befriending a child pickpocket and tries to keep him off the same path.

Although on the surface The Thief is a pretty straightforward crime novel, there is an unsettling air about the proceedings, everything clammy and slick with sweat, dark and rainy and cold.  With its constant grinding on of the machine of Fate, the novel actually reads like something between Richard Stark and Albert Camus.

I picked this up without knowing anything about it at the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana and read it quickly.  I have already recommended it to a few others but would say it is for anyone who likes a more offbeat crime story.