Book Review: The Gentleman From Japan by James Church

 

This was another audiobook which I picked up from the local library.

And so I gave it a try. It was fairly captivating at first. Also, I guess that I was hoping it might evoke some nuggets of life in a country somewhere in the Far East, as the name of the novel implies. The main character is not from Japan, but a Korean detective living in China. Indeed, there are such snippets, but not nearly enough.

Most of this story actually takes place in Europe. The investigator is following a deliberately confusing trail towards dumpling machines, which are suspected of having produced dumplings which killed a number of people in the detective's hometown. Everything is meant to confuse as a form of misleading people.

One aspect that I did not like was the detective sarcasm. He always had some kind of wisecrack, and they often were not even all that good (the one that stands out in my memory is a remark made to the effect of there being no more trees in his home country, because they were all cut down to make chop sticks). These smart-ass remarks just kept coming, numerous times seemingly in every conversation that this man (the main character) had. After a while, I almost felt like telling the audiobook narrator to just shut up, already. 

Another character, the man's uncle, seems to represent the closest thing that this book really ever gets to ancient Eastern wisdom. Only, he is not that wise. But at least when this uncle was talking, it was a break from the constant wisecracks of the main character. In the end, this uncle is the one who actually figures out the mystery before his nephew, the inspector. Perhaps that is because the inspector spends too much time and energy on wisecracks than on anything else. 

Now, I do not like to give negative reviews, if possible. Really, this is not entirely unentertaining, or anything. However, I personally was not particularly boiled over by it and, as mentioned, actually got annoyed with the constant smartass comebacks or comments, which often were not even appropriate under the circumstances. Perhaps the author, James Church, inserted these to help make this a bit more entertaining or edgy or whatever. But it just did not work for me. It was distracting after a while. And it was one of several reasons which prevents me from recommending this book.