David Peace stamped his mark on the world with the excellent Red Riding Quartet; four novels set in Yorkshire that spanned the decade from 1974 to 1983, stopping off along the way in 1977 and 1980. These dark, brutal novels indicated a man of great talent and personal style. Since then, David has written GB84, a political tale of that year and the Thatcher government’s treatment of the striking miners and The Damned Utd, a fictional account of Brian Clough’s brief reign as Leeds Utd’s manager.

To my mind, David is one of the most unique and exciting writers to have emerged from the UK. He has lived in Tokyo for some time and his adopted city has provided the inspiration for this first in a trilogy of crime novels. Millions are dead; Japan is shattered, shamed. The old rules are being lost and society is fighting to find a new identity. Amongst this chaos morality is a fluid thing, so what do the deaths of two young women matter against this backdrop? For Detective Minami and his fellow officers of Room #2 it means 20 days of intensive investigation amongst the ruins and deception. Battling heat, dust, mosquitoes, lice, despair, the insistent ton ton music of the hammers from the rebuilding, plus his own secrets desperately guarded, Minami struggles with his duty as a police officer, his loved yet despised family and his enigmatic mistress. Surrounded by superiors scared they will lose their jobs in departmental purges and corrupt colleagues, under pressure from a gang boss who is paying him to find not only the murderer of the previous boss but who murdered the assassin, Minami’s world offers little respite from the desolation around him.

Multi-layered, told with a distinct style, this is not only crime fiction at its best but a powerful story of a city searching for hope where there appears to be none.