Shig

by David Turri

In 1937, Shigeru Yuasa is a low-level employee of the Japanese Embassy’s press attaché’s office in Washington. An overweight lush, a misfit estranged from his own culture and roots, Shig is a traitor ripe for the picking. And picked he is, by Lew Buscemi, with the Office of Naval Intelligence. This tale of espionage and betrayal follows their intertwined lives for the next twenty years – to the capital of the Imperial Empire, in which Shig heads an ONI spy ring through the turbulent events that lead Japan down the road to Pearl Harbor; to the desolation that was Tokyo at war’s end and into Sugamo Prison, where Shig is one of twelve hundred suspected war criminals await judgement; and to the world of the American Occupation, where he and Buscemi are drawn into a web of political intrigue, blackmail and murder.

205 pages, Paperback

Published October 16, 2019

About the author

David Turri was born in Liverpool in the 1950s and grew up in New Zealand. After living in Barcelona for a few years, he settled down permanently in Japan, where he is surrounded by a noisy harem of wife, two grown daughters and two granddaughters. He has been writing most of his life – textbooks for the English language industry, which industry pays the rent and puts food on the table; and fiction. In spite of his wife’s unspoken belief that his novels would only be published posthumously, one was actually published two years ago. “Damaged Cargoes” is an historical story about child trafficking and opium set in Kobe in 1870. Another novel, an occult story titled “29 Argyle Drive”, was published last year and is proving popular among Amazon horror fans. It is set in Christchurch, where he grew up, against the background of the earthquake that destroyed the city in 2011. A third book (“Escarpment”) will appear shortly. This is a strange mixture of humor, occult and war and focuses on the Battle of Okinawa. When not writing at the computer, he spends most of his evenings scribbling in parks near his home; where a bench is his outdoor office, a bottle of wine fuels his imagination and the prose flows from his pen into a notebook among the mosquitoes.

Reviews

[Goth Gone Grey · Rating 4 out of 5]

“To America, land of bourbon, hot dogs, and beautiful women.”

This is a historical fiction book, woven around the experiences of the lead character, Shig. It's entirely drama, and Shig's focus is all about his job - don't expect romance here. The time frame is the late '30's onward, including times of war and the aftermath.

The tone is matter of fact, even when describing some fairly awful events. It works well, recounting fictionalized accounts of wartime atrocities with a dissociated, unemotional point of view a breath removed from what's actually happening. And yet, the language is descriptive, compelling the reader to continue to see what happens to the perfectly imperfect lead character. An example of the writing:

"And as the cicadas outside burst into a wild sound that drowned out the traffic roar, they opened their bags of memory. Like a pair of travelers arrived at their destination, they opened all the old baggage of the past. Took out the forgotten things and dusted them off and recollected them. They didn’t notice the time going because they were not in strong contact with the here and now anymore. They were elsewhere."

[J.D. Schechter · Rating 3 out of 5]

It filled some time

A plodding narrative of a boring individual who ineffectively spied on his own country with no discernible effect on the war. And the editing was amateurish - Lt Colonel or Lt Commander? 1950 before WW II?