Burnt by the Rising Sun

By Lev Grossman

In a jingoistic, rabidly anti-American Eastern nation, a military coterie plans a devastating sneak attack on U.S. soil. If Martin Cruz Smith's suspenseful, surprisingly lyrical new novel were set in Afghanistan, it would have been called September 10. Instead we're in Japan, the year is 1941, and the book is December 6 (Simon & Schuster; 339 pages)--the day before Pearl Harbor.

Our hero is Harry Niles, a classic noir name if ever there was one, and Harry is an antihero par excellence. The son of American missionaries, he grew up on the streets of Tokyo and now runs a hip expatriate jazz bar there (think Rick's Cafe in Casablanca with calligraphy).

A grifter with a gift for double-talk in two languages, Harry loves all things Japanese, but he is a white man, a gaijin, and as wartime approaches, he needs to decide where his real loyalties lie. Both sides, West and East, suspect Harry of spying. His two girlfriends--Michiko, an enigmatic Japanese gamine, and Alice, the jaded wife of a British diplomat--are getting jealous of each other. Harry's archenemy, a psychotic, bisexual samurai, is stalking him with a sword. As the clock ticks down to zero, the action speeds up, blurring into a cherry-blossom-scented, sake-drenched fever dream.

In novels like Gorky Park and Havana Bay, Smith has made a specialty of looking the wrong way through the gunsight, describing America's historical enemies with a vivid sense of place that complicates what we read in history books. Here Smith's 1940s Tokyo is so gloriously and tenderly realized, ringing with modan jazu (modern jazz) and the tinkling of geisha headdresses, that the reader understands the hold it has on Harry and the reason his loyalties are so tragically divided. His dilemma is the real mystery in December 6. After all, every story, like every war, has two sides. --By Lev Grossman