The Kingdom

May 23, 2016
Femme fatale Yurika, the emotionally detached narrator of Nakamura’s second noir set in Tokyo’s criminal underworld (after 2012’s The Thief), makes a living by seducing powerful men into compromising photographs. Used to a position of control, Yurika is confused by the vulnerability provoked by an encounter with a gentle, long-lost friend from the orphanage she grew up in, a meeting that unexpectedly pulls her into the orbit of Kizaki, an omnipotent, demonic underworld boss, whose meticulously devised (yet randomly triggered) cruelty emerges not from self-interest but from an infatuation with chaos and human fear. The novel’s straining toward philosophical meaning sometimes weighs down the plot, but the tense, brutal style and shocking images enmesh an uneasy reader in the dark mechanics of the shadow systems underwriting society. Yurika, deliberately unlikable, yet determined to survive, makes an ideal guide into Nakamura’s nightmare kingdom, one node in a nihilistic entanglement of lives forged outside of conventional legal and moral frameworks.

June 1, 2016
In his afterword, the author explains that The Kingdom it not a sequel, but a sister novel to his critically acclaimed The Thief (2012). Both books feature a sadistic character named Kizaki, who is involved in a syndicate that appears to manipulate the government toward its own ends, which are never made clear. Good and evil are elusive not only to the reader, but also to many of the story's characters. Yurika, for example, has made a profitable career of setting up prominent men in compromising circumstances for syndicate use against its foes or to persuade them to join. When her involvement with the syndicate intensifies, she finds herself at a loss in her dealings with the monstrous Kizaki. Evocative of the great Poe, whose reflections on perverseness in The Black Cat are well matched by Kizaki's psychobabble about Christians and Sophocles. Recommend this intense, unrelenting novel for hard-core fans of noir fiction, but be advised that the passages in which it is suggested that women can be sexually gratified during rape may well prove offensive to many.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2016

In the Japanese underworld, Yurika is an enigma posing as a prostitute who lures high-profile men to drug and photograph them for blackmailing purposes. She knows very little about the crime organizations that she works for and prefers it that way. Yurika's shadowy life has kept the young woman, who fled a dark and sad past, alive. But one night she crosses paths with an old acquaintance, the rumored psychopathic crime boss Kizaki. She is forced to play a dangerous game in which betrayal, trust, and revenge become weapons. The high-tension, sparse narrative adds to the complicated nature of the crime underworld depicted here. VERDICT With a complex yet sympathetic antiheroine who must outwit the most cunning and twisted minds, Nakamura's (The Thief) dark crime novel sets the bar for gritty, twisted plots that keep readers constantly guessing. A great summer pick for crime and mystery buffs. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/16.]--Ron Samul, New London, CT

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2016

Companion to The Thief, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, this latest from Oe Prize winner Nakamura is his first novel to feature a female protagonist. Freelancer Yurika works for a mysterious organization in Tokyo, posing as a prostitute to snare powerful men whom she drugs and photographs in compromising positions for the purposes of blackmail. But she herself has blackmail-worthy secrets.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.