{"id":7583,"date":"2018-11-19T06:56:09","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T11:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7583"},"modified":"2018-11-19T06:56:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-19T11:56:09","slug":"countdown-to-osaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7583","title":{"rendered":"****Countdown to Osaka"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Osaka,

creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Joe Hefferon \u2013 Today we see more crime fiction set in Japan, Korea, and other countries of the Far East, with Western authors also probing these cultures\u2019 perplexities. Joe Hefferon\u2019s latest novel, Countdown to Osaka<\/a>, is an exciting addition to the mix. His main characters\u2014female yakuza assassin Koi and French illegal gun merchant Le Sauvage\u2014are larger-than-life, but such interesting characters you gladly accept their unerring skills in martial arts and criminal strategy.<\/p>\n

In the beginning of the story, Koi is disillusioned with life in the organized crime syndicate to which she belongs and tired of killing at its behest. She wants out. But there is no easy out of the yakuza. In a satisfying hero\u2019s journey move, her mentor in the organization, an \u201caging jackal named Hayato,\u201d gives her one last mission\u2014kill Le Sauvage and stop his plan to steal a fortune in Japanese gold, lost since the fall of the Shoguns. No one is sure where it is, but Le Sauvage, it seems, is closing in on it.<\/p>\n

If she fails, Hayato will kill her. Of course, Le Sauvage and his heavy guard of former French Foreign Legionnaires and special operations soldiers may beat him to it. If she succeeds, she can have her freedom. So he says. In the distance, a dogged Interpol inspector lags several steps behind the action.<\/p>\n

Koi is a tough cookie on the outside, though another dimension of her is revealed through her devotion to her dying mother. It is her mother\u2019s wish that she free herself from the yakuza, which adds to Koi\u2019s determination. Koi\u2019s mother had many struggles raising her half-European daughter as an unmarried woman. Many of the novel\u2019s situations are influenced by the social and cultural mores of Japan. Although I am not an expert on Japanese culture, these descriptions and sometimes subtle reflections of what is and is not possible in daily behavior ring true.<\/p>\n

Le Sauvage\u2019s network soon realizes an \u201cAsian woman\u201d is after him, but she manages to outwit them for a while, including seeking refuge in the apartment of a theater-loving gay bartender in Nice, Le Sauvage\u2019s home turf. Hefferon includes numerous comic touches in this encounter, and you may regret when it races to a close. In fact, many of the secondary characters\u2014including members of the Frenchman\u2019s gang and a dissolute British scholar of Asian literature\u2014are interesting in their own right and not just in place to fill out a scene.<\/p>\n

The treasure hunt moves back and forth from Saigon to France to Osaka, and while multi-time-zone jet-setting is sometimes not especially believable, Koi and the yakuza on one hand and Le Sauvage and his team on the other have almost unlimited funds, keeping the travel at least financially plausible.<\/p>\n

The clues to where the Japanese gold may have been hidden are scattered, some in a quite unexpected place. Puzzle elements are a staple of mystery fiction, and the way the team puts that aspect of the story together is complicated and lost me a couple of times, but nevertheless great fun. Hefferon has deployed the tropes of crime and mystery fiction with exceeding skill here, creating characters to believe in and a crackerjack plot, but don\u2019t be lulled into thinking you know how it will all end.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases\u2014a few pennies to put in a jar to pay my WordPress bills. When you purchase this book by clicking on the photo above, you help me fill the jar. Thank you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joe Hefferon \u2013 Today we see more crime fiction set in Japan, Korea, and other countries of the Far East, with Western authors also probing these cultures\u2019 perplexities. Joe Hefferon\u2019s latest novel, Countdown to Osaka, is an exciting addition … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Countdown to Osaka - exciting new mystery\/thriller pitting a female yakuza assassin against French gun merchants.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,3,126,32],"tags":[1455,363,850,1104,1456,1457],"class_list":["post-7583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-thriller","tag-countdown-to-osaka","tag-france","tag-japan","tag-joe-hefferon","tag-saigon","tag-treasure-hunt"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Yj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7585,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7583\/revisions\/7585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}