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    Tokyo Girl: A Frank Ryan Mystery
    Tokyo Girl: A Frank Ryan Mystery
    Tokyo Girl: A Frank Ryan Mystery
    Ebook82 pages1 hour

    Tokyo Girl: A Frank Ryan Mystery

    By Brian Harvey

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Piano tuner and jazz musician Frank Ryan is in Japan teaching bored housewives how to play piano. Then he gets a gig in a trendy underground bar and ends up ensnared with a young woman with a grudge and the crime boss who owns the bar. Drawn into Tokyo Girl’s vendetta, Frank stumbles into an underworld where transgressions are paid for by the flash of a razor-sharp cleaver. And for a pianist, that’s not a good thing.

    Tokyo Girl is the follow-up to Beethoven’s Tenth, featuring reluctant sleuth Frank Ryan.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOrca Book Publishers
    Release dateAug 23, 2016
    ISBN9781459810785
    Tokyo Girl: A Frank Ryan Mystery
    Author

    Brian Harvey

    Brian Harvey is a scientist and writer. He holds a PhD in marine biology and specializes in conservation of aquatic biodiversity. Brian’s first nonfiction book for a general audience, The End of the River, was published in 2008. He is currently finishing a second nonfiction book about sailing around Vancouver Island and is working on several fiction projects. Brian lives in Nanaimo, British Columbia. For more information, visit www.brianharvey.org.

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    Reviews for Tokyo Girl

    3.5/5

    14 ratings6 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Finally got around to reading Tokyo Girl by Brian Harvey and it is indeed a fast read. It tells the story of a Canadian Jazz musician Frank Ryan, who gets caught up with the Yakuza through a young woman who he is teaching piano to. While there is hinting at a mystery, it is more about a westerner lost in traditions and manners of Japan and how that impacts him. The good is that Brian Harvey did an excellent job at researching the setting. Often while I was reading the book, I was reminded of Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein and how being indebted to the Yakuza is always a bad idea. I also got a strong sense of Noir in this book, so a plus there as well. The bad is Frank comes across as a leaf on the wind that mainly allows the manipulations of others to carry him through the events of the story. While there are examples of him being proactive, most of the time it is just reactive. In summary if you want a quick Noir story set in Japan, you will probably enjoy Tokyo Girl.
    • 4/5
      I received Tokyo Girl by Brian Harvey through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program courtesy of Orca Books. I'd never read anything by Brian Harvey. However, I'm going to find a copy of his first fiction book, Beethoven's Tenth, about the same main character. It was a light mystery, quick read and the descriptions made you feel like you were in Japan.
    • 3/5
      Tokyo Girl is the second in a series about Frank Ryan, the so-called "unlikely sleuth." Incidents and characters from the first book, Beethoven's Tenth, are referenced, so it seems that we are missing the beginning of the story, because Ryan is in Japan directly because of events that happened in that first book.The back cover of the book says that this book is "Adult Fiction * Ages 16+", so it seems, because of that, and because of the length of the book--only 138 pages, that the book is for young adults. However, there are at least two chapters about love hotels and sex, which make this more for older readers.The back cover also states that this book is part of the "Rapid Reads" series, and, indeed, it is a rapid read and can easily be read at one sitting. The book does pull you along to find out what will happen next.Being set in Japan, too, the book is quite informative about Japanese culture. I even learned something about the Fukushima nuclear reactor that I hadn't known before: namely, that homeless people were sent into the area to clean up for a pittance.So, the story was intriguing, and informative, but because of the short length, many details were unexplained and left me wondering, how did Ryan figure that out with such scant information? Furthermore, the ending was similar to the beginning--just as it felt that I had missed the beginning of the story, I felt that something was missing at the ending, too. Too many loose, unexplained ends. If I had read the first book, I probably would have felt this book was more complete than it is to me now. I also don't know if there will be a sequel, which might help with the completion aspect. As it is, the book seems too thin on story detail (although quite good on Japanese culture detail).[For the publisher: on page 27, "you" is mistakenly repeated in a sentenceand on page 38, tepco is spelt lowercase, when it should be TEPCO.]
    • 4/5
      “Tokyo Girl” by Brian HarveyI received this book as an Early Reviewer copy.Frank Ryan is living in Japan having decided to leave his hometown of Nanaimo after finding himself in danger. Frank has a number of piano students including Akiko who introduces Frank to her “father’ who hires Frank to play jazz in his bar. This is not a good idea because unfortunately he is now involved with another lot of crooks and in addition his new found girl friend is not what she seems. Frank is the narrator in this book and recounts his experience in Japan with wry humour. I enjoyed the first book about Frank in the series and hope there will be more. This is another plot driven addition to a Rapid Reads series. I hope there will be more tales about Frank in the future.
    • 3/5
      This Rapid Reads book is a really rapid read but it was just what I needed to while away an hour or two of train travel. This is the second in a series starring jazz pianist Frank Ryan. When last we saw him he was on Vancouver Island but due to events in that first book he thought it was a good idea to vacate his home for a while. He decided to go to Japan where he knew his talents as a pianist would be appreciated. He got some jobs teaching Japanese housewives to play a few classical pieces. Through one of them he met a bar owner who hired him to play piano at night in his bar. Frank soon found out was that his boss was a member of the yakuza, the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia. He decided not to worry about that as long as the tips kept rolling in but then he met Momo, a gorgeous woman who had some issues with his boss and wanted Frank to help. You just know that isn’t going to end well.
    • 3/5
      After his unwelcome adventure of Beethoven's Tenth, piano tuner/jazz pianist decided to get as far away from Nanaimo as possible. He has ended up in Tokyo shortly after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Frank found a small apartment to sublet, and he gets by teaching piano lessons. One of his students turns out to be the mistress of a mob boss, and this connection eventually leads to trouble for Frank.This short novel is Harvey's second for the publisher's Rapid Reads series of high interest, low reading level books for adult readers, including ESL students. Harvey writes well, and he weaves in interesting facts from his “day job” as a marine biologist. Both the time setting shortly after the tsunami that caused the nuclear disaster and a scene set in Tokyo's Tsukiji seafood market allow the author to write what he knows. My main disappointment stems from the fact that this book isn't much of a mystery, despite its billing as a “Frank Ryan mystery”. Its more of an adventure. It is indeed a rapid read that will likely be enjoyed by readers who find the setting appealing and who are comfortable with a level of sexual content just short of graphic and explicit. (It would probably earn a PG-13 rating if it were a movie.)This review is based on an advanced reading copy provided by the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

    Book preview

    Tokyo Girl - Brian Harvey

    Acknowledgments

    Looking for the Moon

    "That’s so much better, I said, trying to make it sound like I meant it. At the keyboard, Mrs. Ogawa made a quick ducking motion, as though someone had zinged a baseball at her head. I’m pretty sure this meant I know you’re lying. But thanks anyway. She folded her small hands in her lap and awaited instructions. She was wearing her home" uniform: gray jumper, furry, pink slippers and a powder-blue apron that said Loving Food Enjoy.

    Ducking my own head was something I did every Wednesday, when I came to Mrs. Ogawa’s apartment. I didn’t really need to. The door frame was big enough for most Westerners, and I’m only five eleven. But I ducked anyway, even after I’d reduced my height by taking off my shoes. Maybe because the space I was entering was so ridiculously small. Maybe because I was afraid of doing some kind of humiliating damage. Or maybe it was just Japan. The whole country made me feel like ducking.

    Mrs. Ogawa’s husband was a wholesaler of fish cakes in the famous Tsukiji seafood market. Or something like that. I’d never met him. Even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have asked about his place of business. If I’d known that my last night in Japan would be spent in his fish market, I would have.

    His wife had her heart set on learning Clair de Lune, by Claude Debussy. We’d been at it together for two months and were closing in on page two. I didn’t have the heart to tell her what was coming on page three. Mrs. Ogawa had applied herself equally hard to learning English, so we could communicate after a fashion. But these piano lessons were a challenge for both of us.

    Try thinking of a full moon, I said. Mrs. Ogawa ducked another baseball. You’re standing on the shore of a lake, the moon’s risen, and it’s just pouring this warm light over the water. She ducked again. As though… I stopped. What was I thinking? There were probably another fifty Mrs. Ogawas in this building alone. Ditto for the building next door, ditto as far as I could see into the smog outside. A whole army of Ogawa-sans. All of them seemed determined to learn Clair de Lune, or Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. But here was the problem: the moon in Tokyo, if you saw it at all, was about as brilliant as a dirty twenty-five-watt bulb. Neon light and air pollution took care of the moon. As for a deserted lake—forget it.

    We sat in silence while I struggled for words. Together we listened to the muffled roar of the Chuo Expressway half a mile from the Ogawa family’s tenth-floor apartment in Setagaya. Mrs. Ogawa’s apartment was tagged in my smartphone—otherwise I’d never be able to find it.

    Mrs. Ogawa paid me well. So did the other Mrs. Ogawas who’d seen my ad and convinced their husbands to allow a gaijin—a foreigner—into the family home for a weekly shot of culture. I wanted her to get her money’s worth. But it was in moments like this that I felt the most alien in Japan. Real communication seemed remote.

    We need a little more emotion, I finally said. You know what I mean? Emotion? Mrs. Ogawa looked at her hands, and her head bobbed, ever so slightly. Everyone knew what emotions were, even if they dealt with them differently. May I? I tapped her on the shoulder, and she shot to attention. I slid onto the piano bench.

    Lake. Moon. All alone. She stood behind me and I played the first few bars. Clair de Lune really is a beautiful piece, even if it was written for a pianist with hands twice the size of my student’s. I could hear Mrs. Ogawa breathing behind me. Or maybe it was the Chuo Expressway. I decided to let Debussy do the talking. I didn’t stop until I’d played the whole piece through.

    Then I just sat there. Mrs. Ogawa’s breathing sounded different. I turned around. She had one hand over her nose and mouth. There were tear tracks down both cheeks. She sniffed. The lesson was over.

    Thank you, Frank-san, she said from behind her hand. She darted into her miniature kitchen and extracted five thousand yen from a drawer the way she always did. Then she presented the banknotes to me formally, with both hands and a little bow. Japan was still a cash-dominated society. Every housewife seemed to have her own private stash somewhere. One of my students kept it underneath the rice cooker.

    Mrs. Ogawa’s money was wet with her tears. That was as close as I was going to get to knowing what she was really thinking. She darted to the door, smiled bravely while I crammed my big feet into my shoes, then lowered her head while I lumbered out.

    When I reached street level, the roar of the city engulfed me and the midday heat had me sweating in seconds. Middle-aged ladies hid from the sun beneath umbrellas and pizza-sized plastic visors. Elegant grandmothers pulled wheeled shopping bags. It was early June. The national tie loosening and boozing of cherry blossom festival was over. But the city still had another ten degrees of cloying heat in store for us.

    Spotless cars crawled beneath a yellowish haze. Most of them were white. One of Tokyo’s millions of silent silver bicycles blew past me on the sidewalk, its basket jammed with shopping bags. I staggered into a concrete telephone pole.

    I had two free hours before my next student. I’d need all of that time to get to Ota district by train, grab a cheap bowl of ramen to fortify me, and cover the last few

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