Occupied City (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)

On January 26, 1948, a man posing as a public health official arrives at a bank in Tokyo.  He explains that he’s there to treat everyone who might have been exposed to a recent outbreak of dysentery.  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 including a journalist, a gangster-turned-businessman, an “occult detective,” and 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.  Told with David Peace’s brilliantly idiosyncratic and mesmerizing voice, Occupied City is a stunningly audacious work from a singular writer.