Lead Review – dark thriller set in in Tokyo
- Book: Last Stop Tokyo
- Location: Tokyo
- Author: James Buckler
Last Stop Tokyo is the story of Alex and Naoko. Both are escaping from their pasts – Alex from events in London which made him move 6,000 miles from home, and Naoko from events in Tokyo which she would rather put behind her. Their fit is that they are less than 100% honest with each other.
They are introduced by Hiro – a successful Tokyo broker with whom Alex was a student in London. Naoko is a childhood friend of Hiro’s. Hiro, because he knows both their pasts, does not want them to be together – he fears someone will get hurt. Alex (for reasons I won’t reveal for fear of a spoiler…) spends six days in gaol in Tokyo. It is a degrading and frightening experience… He makes some not very nice ‘friends’ who continue to haunt him once he is free again. The seamier side of life in Tokyo comes to the fore. His relationship with Naoko goes through ups and downs.
There is involvement with gangsters, drug dealers, and prostitution. Alex and Naoko sink deeper into a pit from which escape is difficult. The story progresses to a thrilling and unexpected finale. But, a word of warning, don’t be tempted to put the book down with ten pages to go when all seems to have been happily resolved. There is more to come!
Last Stop Tokyo is a debut novel that has a great deal to recommend it. It is generally well written and it is genuinely exciting. I do, though, have a couple of concerns. The first is to question some of the editing. There are a few paragraphs that read a tad simplistically, and there are descriptions of the check-in procedures at an airport (and other irrelevances) that add nothing at all to the story. The second is the accuracy of some of the locations (very important, of course, to TripFiction). The book opens with Alex flying back into Narita from Thailand. Important for the story he has only hand baggage – and, so as not to arouse suspicion – he decides to wait by the baggage carousel until other passengers had collected their bags, and then join them, before proceeding through immigration control. But, in Narita (as indeed in most airports around the world), you pass through immigration before you get to the baggage carousels… Similarly, later in the book, one of the characters pulls the communication cord on a Shinkansen and alights from the train before walking back down the track. I doubt, in such a situation, it is possible to open the sealed door – and it would be suicidal to walk on the track. Such ‘errors’ do not, of course, detract from the excitement the book genuinely generates – but they do jar a bit with the location purists.
All that said, though, Last Stop Tokyo is a gripping and insightful read.
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