1949. Shimoyama, le pre?sident des chemins de fer japonais a disparu. Son corps ne tarde pas a? e?tre retrouve?, de?membre?, sur les voies. Shimoyama venait de proce?der au licenciement de 30 000 travailleurs du rail, il e?tait donc devenu une cible potentielle. Harry Sweeney, flic de?sabuse? du Montana, se retrouve charge? d'enque?ter, sans conclusion de?finitive. L'affaire rebondit en 1964 lorsqu'un auteur qui devait e?crire sur l'affaire Shimoyama disparai?t. Cette fois, c'est un prive?, Murota Hideki, qui tente de remonter la piste. L'affaire rebondira une dernie?re fois en 1989, alors que l'empereur Hirohito est mourant. Donald Reichenbach, un ancien agent de la CIA devenu un brillant traducteur, semble rattrape? par son passe?...
« Et les supporters du Spion Kop jettent leurs écharpes à Bill. Leurs écharpes rouges. Une pluie d'écharpes tombe sur Bill. En guise de remerciement. Toutes leurs écharpes. Leurs écharpes rouges. Et Bill ramasse leurs écharpes. Toutes leurs écharpes. Leurs écharpes rouges. Et Bill noue une écharpe autour de son cou. Une écharpe rouge. Et Bill brandit une autre écharpe. Une autre écharpe rouge. Entre ses poings. Une écharpe. Une écharpe rouge. Tenue bien haut. Entre ses bras levés. En signe de remerciement. »
C'est dans un style incantatoire et hypnotique que David Peace raconte l'histoire du Liverpool Football Club lorsque Bill Shankly en prit la direction. Il prend, dans Rouge ou mort, une hauteur extraordinaire et signe le grand roman de l'année.
In 1974 the brilliant and controversial Brian Clough made perhaps his most eccentric decision: he accepted the Leeds United manager's job. As successor to Don Revie, his bitter adversary, he was to last only 44 days. In one of the most acclaimed novels of this or any other year, David Peace takes us into the mind and thoughts of Ol'Big'Ead himself, and brings vividly to life one of post-war Britain's most complex and fascinating characters.
August 1946. One year on from surrender and Tokyo lies broken and bleeding at the feet of its American victors. Against this extraordinary historical backdrop, Tokyo Year Zero opens with the discovery of the bodies of two young women in Shiba Park. Against his wishes, Detective Minami is assigned to the case, and as he gets drawn ever deeper into these complex and horrific murders, he realises that his own past and secrets are indelibly linked to those of the dead women and their killer.
It's August 1946--one year after the Japanese surrender--and women are turning up dead all over Tokyo. Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police--irreverent, angry, despairing--goes on the hunt for a killer known as the Japanese Bluebeard--a decorated former Imperial soldier who raped and murdered at least ten women amidst the turmoil of post-war Tokyo. As he undertakes the case, Minami is haunted by his own memories of atrocities that he can no longer explain or forgive. Unblinking in its vision of a nation in a chaotic, hellish period in its history, Tokyo Year Zero is a darkly lyrical and stunningly original crime novel.
A fierce, exquisitely dark novel that plunges us into post-World War II Occupied Japan in a Rashomon-like retelling of a mass poisoning (based on an actual event), its aftermath, and the hidden wartime atrocities that led to the crime.
On January 26, 1948, a man identifying himself as a public health official arrives at a bank in Tokyo. There has been an outbreak of dysentery in the neighborhood, he explains, and he has been assigned by Occupation authorities to treat everyone who might have been exposed to the disease. Soon after drinking the medicine he administers, twelve employees are dead, four are unconscious, and the "official" has fled . . .
Twelve voices tell the story of the murder from different perspectives. One of the victims speaks, for all the victims, from the grave. We read the increasingly mad notes of one of the case detectives, the desperate letters of an American occupier, the testimony of a traumatized survivor. We meet a journalist, a gangster-turned-businessman, an "occult detective," a Soviet soldier, a well-known painter. Each voice enlarges and deepens the portrait of a city and a people making their way out of a war-induced hell.
Occupied City immerses us in an extreme time and place with a brilliantly idiosyncratic, expressionistic, mesmerizing narrative. It is a stunningly audacious work of fiction from a singular writer.
Great Britain. 1984. The miners' strike. The government against the people.In a bloody and dramatic fictional portrait of the year that left an indelible mark on the nation's consciousness, David Peace brings Britain's social and political past shockingly to life.
In 1959, Liverpool Football Club were in the Second Division. Liverpool Football Club had never won the FA Cup. Fifteen seasons later, Liverpool Football Club had won three League titles, two FA Cups and the UEFA Cup. Liverpool Football Club had become the most consistently successful team in England. And the most passionately supported club. Their manager was revered as a god.Destined for immortality. Their manager was Bill Shankly. His job was his life. His life was football. His football a form of socialism. Bill Shankly inspired people. Bill Shankly transformed people. The players and the supporters.His legacy would reveberate through the ages. In 1974, Liverpool Football Club and Bill Shankly stood on the verge of even greater success. In England and in Europe. But in 1974, Bill Shankly shocked Liverpool and football. Bill Shankly resigned. Bill Shankly retired. Red or Dead is the story of the rise of Liverpool Football Club and Bill Shankly. And the story of the retirement of Bill Shankly. Of one man and his work. And of the man after that work. A man in two halves. Home and away. Red or dead.
'We all know what this could be: we know it could be dysentery, we know it could be typhoid. In the Occupied City, we all know what this could mean -'Tokyo, January 26th, 1948. As the third year of the US Occupation of Japan begins, a man enters a downtown bank. He speaks of an outbreak of dysentery and says he is a doctor, sent by the Occupation authorities, to treat anyone who might have been exposed.Clear liquid is poured into sixteen teacups. Sixteen employees of the bank drink this liquid according to strict instructions. Within minutes twelve of them are dead, the other four unconscious. The man disappears along with some, but not all, of the bank's money. And so begins the biggest manhunt in Japanese history.In Occupied City, David Peace dramatises and explores the rumours of complicity, conspiracy and cover-up that surround the chilling case of the Teikoku Bank Massacre: of the man who was convicted of the crime, of the legacy of biological warfare programmes, and of the victims and survivors themselves.The second part of his acclaimed Tokyo Trilogy - and an extraordinary picture of a city in mourning - Occupied City is further evidence of a singular and formidable novelist.
