A haunting psychological crime novel, The Earthquake Bird is a debut which has caused an international sensation pre-publication."Early this morning, several hours before my arrest, I was woken up by an earth tremor. I mention the incident not to suggest that there was a connection - that somehow the fault lines in my life came crashing together in the form of couple of policemen - for in Tokyo we have a quake like this every month. I am simply relating the sequence of events as it happened. It has been an unusual day and I would hate to forget anything..."So begins this chilling novel set in Japan which reveals a murder on its first page and takes its readers into the mind of the chief suspect, Lucy Fly - a young, vulnerable English girl living and working in Tokyo as a translator. As Lucy is interrogated by the police she reveals her past to the reader, and it is a past which is dangerously ambiguous and compromising. A novel inbued with the chill of The Wasp Factory and the shock of The Sculptress, this is the debut of a major new talent.
The book’s greatest strength is its secretive and enigmatic narrator. The murder plot is interesting but its conclusion is not particularly surprising.
Read my full review at Mysteries Ahoy!