May 30, 2011
Winslow spins a sequel adventure yarn very nearly as entertaining as its predecessor, the 1979 thriller Shibumi. Set in the Far East in 1951, it features a 26-year-old version of Shibumi's popular protagonist, mystic and master assassin Nicolai Hel. Holter Graham give the prose a splendidly nuanced narration, using a calm, subtly lilting voice in charting the progress of the "more Asian than Western" hero, beginning with his release from a U.S. prison in Tokyo courtesy of the CIA, which put him there, through dramatic sequences of romance, violence, honor, and betrayal, and ending with a slam-bang confrontation with the villains in the underground tunnels of Vietnam. Along the way, Holter makes his Far Eastern accent more prominent, giving voice to the Asian characters, and switches to a touch of French for the love interest, a beautiful spy named Solange; Russian for several of the secondary villains; and a guttural, ugly American for the book's major protagonist. A Grand Central hardcover.
January 3, 2011
Nicholai Hel was already an accomplished assassin, a master of hoda korosu ("naked kill"), when introduced in Trevanian's 1979 Shibumi. Now Winslow (The Life and Death of Bobby Z.) dons Trevanian's mantle and cloaks Hel in a tangled series of adventures and misadventures in this exciting prequel. Hel's conditional ticket out of an American-run prison in 1951 Japan requires him to acquire a new face and identity and to carry out a probably suicidal mission to assassinate Soviet commissioner Yuri Voroshenin in China. In the guise of 26-year-old Michel Guibert, a French arms dealer, Hel enters a labyrinthine world of intrigue as various Chinese factions and foreign interests struggle for advantage. Winslow successfully fleshes out Hel's mixed heritage (aristocratic Russian mother, surrogate Japanese father and mentor), and eventually takes him to war-torn Vietnam, where Hel's expertise in applying Go strategy is as important to his survival as his physical skills. Winslow has crafted an impressive prelude to a highly esteemed classic thriller.