The history channel

摘要

What do Osama bin Laden, Dante Alighieri and Admiral Yamamoto have in common? Not much on the face of it. But they each appear as characters in three of this autumn's biggest thrillers, which weave their stories around real historical figures and events. Harry Niles, the wisecracking antihero of Martin Cruz Smith's latest novel, grew up in Japan, the son of American missionaries. He's a cheerfully amoral wheeler-dealer who runs a gin-joint in downtown Tokyo; he can't even imagine living anywhere else. But it is wartime, and American-Japanese relations are at breaking point. ("December 6" is published in Britain as "Tokyo Station", which seems sensible. How many British readers are likely to remember that December 6th 1941 was the day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour?) Harry feels as Japanese as he does American, which endears him to neither side. Meanwhile, he is juggling two difficult lady friends―Michiko, his live-in lover, and Alice, the world-weary wife of a British diplomat. And as if all that wasn't enough, his old nemesis―a bloodthirsty, bisexual samurai with a sharp sword to grind―has just hit town.