Tokyo year zero

Tokyo, August 1946, roughly a year after Japan's surrender. Across the city, women are being found dead. Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police takes on the search for a man the press has dubbed the Japanese Bluebeard, a decorated ex-Imperial soldier believed responsible for at least ten rapes and murders carried out in the confusion of the postwar capital.

Minami is a bitter, impatient investigator whose anger and despair shape how he approaches the case. As he pursues the killer, his own past keeps intruding: memories of wartime atrocities he cannot account for and cannot excuse.

David Peace, an English novelist, presents a Japan in ruins with stark, incantatory prose. The result is a dark, lyrical crime novel that refuses to look away from the country's bleakest years.