Edge by Koji Suzuki

 

(hb; 2012. Translated from the Japanese into English by Camellia Nieh and Jonathan Lloyd-Davies.)

From the inside flap

“When a team of American scientists tests a new computer hardware by calculating the value of Pi into the deep decimals, the figures begin to repeat a pattern where there ought to be none. After older machines of certified reliability give the same result. A seemingly irrational fear sets in. It’s mathematically untenable—unless the physical constants that undergird our universe have altered, ever so slightly.

“Suddenly, on the west coat of the U.S., people start disappearing without a trace. Police and family—when it isn’t the whole family that vanished—don’t have a clue as to why or how. In Japan, too, similar incidents occur, and they seem to have something to do with geological fault lines.

“TV director Hashiba who has latched onto the story, at first in a flippant manner, employing a psychic to investigate the mystery, is forced to recalibrate when the disappearances increase in scale and frequency. What lurks behind them, far from being supernatural, threatens to be natural—a profound disturbance in being itself. Joining him on his quest for the devastating answer is his lover Saeko, whose millionaire publisher father cryptically left her behind when she was still young.

“Eerie developments build up to a mind trip of a crescendo in this tale of quantum horror.”

 

Review

Set in 2012, Edge is a complex, hybrid genre (science fiction, mystery, with a touch of existential horror) work with equally multilayered characters who sometimes, in good way, surprise, just like the well-foreshadowed twists in this cosmic-horrific and quiet-apocalypse read.  While the science fact, spouted in brief intervals throughout Edge, is a bit deep, prolonged and possibly dizzying for the casual reader, it elevates the story and deepens the sorrow, horror, and dark delight experienced by the characters (and hopefully readers). Like Suzuki’s Ringu (English translation: Ring), Edge possesses the same chilly, steady-build pacing mood and atmosphere of the Ringu. It, like Ringu, also is a landmark work, one that haunts (at least this reader) while it informs and entertains. Worth owning, this.

The Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell

 

(pb; 1984: first book in the Abelard Sanction quadrilogy)

From the back cover

“They were orphans, Chris and Saul—raised in a Philadelphia school for boys, bonded by friendship, and devoted to a mysterious man called Eliot.

“He visited them and brought them candy.

“He treated them like sons.

“He trained them to be assassins.

“Now he is trying desperately to have them killed.”

 

Review

Brotherhood is an excellent, hard-to-set-down thriller with characters worth rooting for (from the get-go), character-based action (with explanations of how characters set traps and why they fight the way they fight), and an all-around tautly penned storyline—what makes Brotherhood stand out from its typical-genre set-up is Morrell’s detailed-but-not-yawnable explanations of fighting styles, strategies and mindsets as well as how characters set traps. This is a great read, one of the best conspiracy/violence novels I’ve read in a long while, a promising start to a quadrilogy (two novels and a short story). Followed by The Fraternity of the Stone.

Fun fact: according to the Internet, David Morrell said Eliot is “based a real CIA counter-espionage master, James Jesus Angleton”.

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The resulting two-part television/NBC miniseries, Brotherhood of the Rose, aired on January 22-23, 1989. Gy Waldron wrote its screenplay; Marvin J. Chomsky directed it.

Peter Strauss played Saul Grisman, aka Romulus. David Morse played Chris Killmoonie, aka Remus. Robert Mitchum played John Eliot. Connie Selleca played Erika Bernstein, Saul’s ex-lover and Mossad agent. M. Emmet Walsh played the alcoholic former agent Hardy.