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"[A] rewarding thriller...It contains enough twists and genuine surprises to keep the reader racing toward the satisfying final pages."THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWAlthough 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. "From the Paperback edition."… (more)
User reviews
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.