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Kill Me In Yokohama
Burns Bannion and KARATE.
Burns is back - but things haven't changed a bit. Private eye by accident, he still keeps running into his two favorite pastimes - gorgeous girls and deadly killers.
The girls were all Bannion dreamed they would be, but the killers were bloodier than Bannion could have imagined. So he had to use an equally bloody weapon against them:
The ancient and terrible defensive art of the Japanese - in which the human hand can be as deadly as the sharpest axe.
Burns is back - but things haven't changed a bit. Private eye by accident, he still keeps running into his two favorite pastimes - gorgeous girls and deadly killers.
The girls were all Bannion dreamed they would be, but the killers were bloodier than Bannion could have imagined. So he had to use an equally bloody weapon against them:
The ancient and terrible defensive art of the Japanese - in which the human hand can be as deadly as the sharpest axe.
162 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1960
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November 23, 2025From 1958 through 1967, Earl Norman published nine Bruce Bannion novels, all set in post-war Japan: (1) Kill Me in Tokyo (1958);
(2) Kill Me in Shimbashi (1959); (3) Kill Me in Yokohama (1960); (4) Kill Me in Yoshiwari (1961); (5) Kill Me in Shinjunku (1961); (6) Kill Me on the Ginza (1962); (7) Kill Me in Atami (1962); (8) Kill Me in Yokosuka (1966); and (9) Me in Roppongi (1967).
Bannion is in Japan on the GI bill, allegedly taking courses at Shopia University that are still in pending status and utilizing his free time learning the ancient art of karate. He explains: “However, the courses I had signed up for were still fortunately pending which gave me a chance to pursue what I’d really stayed in Japan for: my studies in karate, that ancient and honorable method of weaponless self-defense, and dames, an equally ancient and honorable course of study and field research. By this time I was pretty good in both, but the latter especially required moolah, aside from the usual needs of keeping body and soul apart, and I had solved this problem heretofore by making like a private eye.”
As he explains it, he became an unlicensed private eye quite by accident and is constantly running afoul of the authorities and cannot carry a weapon so good thing his hands have become deadly weapons themselves. “To build up a means of self-defense, they had begun a program of building up their hands, hardening their knees, their elbows and their feet into the deadliest of weapons. By banging the lower edge of each hand on a hard surface until it was like a ridge of stone, the rough cartilage became impervious to feeling, and the bearer had two ready weapons with which to fell his opponent, plus all force points of the body.”
Most of the time Bannion seems to be playing the plentiful supply of prostitutes and geisha girls. He has a long-term connection with Rumiko- “She was called the Record Player for two reasons: one, her job in this joint was to play the ear-splitting hi-fi records on the set located in the overstuffed back office; second reason, when you got Rumiko in the sack she never stopped.”
If you are easily offended by Bannion’s attitude, then so be it. He’s not. Indeed, when he’s not being bashed in by dozens of hoodlums, he’s partaking in bathhouses and women and makes no excuses for his actions.
In need of cash, Bannion places an ad in the paper and gets in response a high-end Japanese fashion model who is worried about the neighbor’s influence over her kid brother and wants Bannion to remove the neighbor from Japan to protect her brother. “Mariko Melson was one of Japan’s top fashion models, half Japanese, half French. Now what kind of trouble could a doll like Mariko have? How could a babe with a body like hers and loot like she was making have any serious trouble?”
It turns out the neighbor is leading the kid brother into a cabal of international drug peddlers, consolidating operations throughout the Far East. They may Bannion so far has stumbled on their fiendish plots and, though they’ve caught him, he wriggled out of their cages and fights his way through the sewers. The fighting and dialogue are cartoonish: “In karate you learn to be mentally alert and face danger with a coolness based on experience and self-confidence, using your opponent’s cunning and actions as a basis of moves and defenses. With a knowledge of anatomy and practice and skill, you can almost tell what your assailant is going to try next. But I ask you, how do you react to a maniac? How do you attack an already groveling piece of stinking flesh?”
Half tongue in cheek, half serious, Norman’s nine Bruce Bannion novels are meant to be fun.
(2) Kill Me in Shimbashi (1959); (3) Kill Me in Yokohama (1960); (4) Kill Me in Yoshiwari (1961); (5) Kill Me in Shinjunku (1961); (6) Kill Me on the Ginza (1962); (7) Kill Me in Atami (1962); (8) Kill Me in Yokosuka (1966); and (9) Me in Roppongi (1967).
Bannion is in Japan on the GI bill, allegedly taking courses at Shopia University that are still in pending status and utilizing his free time learning the ancient art of karate. He explains: “However, the courses I had signed up for were still fortunately pending which gave me a chance to pursue what I’d really stayed in Japan for: my studies in karate, that ancient and honorable method of weaponless self-defense, and dames, an equally ancient and honorable course of study and field research. By this time I was pretty good in both, but the latter especially required moolah, aside from the usual needs of keeping body and soul apart, and I had solved this problem heretofore by making like a private eye.”
As he explains it, he became an unlicensed private eye quite by accident and is constantly running afoul of the authorities and cannot carry a weapon so good thing his hands have become deadly weapons themselves. “To build up a means of self-defense, they had begun a program of building up their hands, hardening their knees, their elbows and their feet into the deadliest of weapons. By banging the lower edge of each hand on a hard surface until it was like a ridge of stone, the rough cartilage became impervious to feeling, and the bearer had two ready weapons with which to fell his opponent, plus all force points of the body.”
Most of the time Bannion seems to be playing the plentiful supply of prostitutes and geisha girls. He has a long-term connection with Rumiko- “She was called the Record Player for two reasons: one, her job in this joint was to play the ear-splitting hi-fi records on the set located in the overstuffed back office; second reason, when you got Rumiko in the sack she never stopped.”
If you are easily offended by Bannion’s attitude, then so be it. He’s not. Indeed, when he’s not being bashed in by dozens of hoodlums, he’s partaking in bathhouses and women and makes no excuses for his actions.
In need of cash, Bannion places an ad in the paper and gets in response a high-end Japanese fashion model who is worried about the neighbor’s influence over her kid brother and wants Bannion to remove the neighbor from Japan to protect her brother. “Mariko Melson was one of Japan’s top fashion models, half Japanese, half French. Now what kind of trouble could a doll like Mariko have? How could a babe with a body like hers and loot like she was making have any serious trouble?”
It turns out the neighbor is leading the kid brother into a cabal of international drug peddlers, consolidating operations throughout the Far East. They may Bannion so far has stumbled on their fiendish plots and, though they’ve caught him, he wriggled out of their cages and fights his way through the sewers. The fighting and dialogue are cartoonish: “In karate you learn to be mentally alert and face danger with a coolness based on experience and self-confidence, using your opponent’s cunning and actions as a basis of moves and defenses. With a knowledge of anatomy and practice and skill, you can almost tell what your assailant is going to try next. But I ask you, how do you react to a maniac? How do you attack an already groveling piece of stinking flesh?”
Half tongue in cheek, half serious, Norman’s nine Bruce Bannion novels are meant to be fun.
December 4, 2021
American P.I. and Karate Expert in Japan
Set in early 60's Japan, ex-pat karate student and part-time gumshoe Burns Bannion investigates a Japanese model's brother who is mixed up with a criminal gang. Great research, good story, non-PC, of course. Picked up a handful of these novels in 1968 on a stopover at Yokusuka on my way to Korea. Enjoyed the Japanese twist on the hardboiled dick plot. Very readable.
Set in early 60's Japan, ex-pat karate student and part-time gumshoe Burns Bannion investigates a Japanese model's brother who is mixed up with a criminal gang. Great research, good story, non-PC, of course. Picked up a handful of these novels in 1968 on a stopover at Yokusuka on my way to Korea. Enjoyed the Japanese twist on the hardboiled dick plot. Very readable.
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