#42 Tokyo Year Zero, by David Peace (Faber and Faber Limited)

If you like your books easy to read, steer clear of David Peace's latest series, which starts with Tokyo Year Zero. The author of The Damned United, a wonderful novel, has a very distinctive style, whereby the reader hears the interior monologue of characters' thoughts and much more as well as the interaction between characters.

Peace is all about rhythm and cadence, building a foreboding atmosphere using a staccato and truncated sentence structure which is a continuous and intense assault on the senses, much like the 'ton-ton-ton' with which Peace conveys the constant noise of the rebuilding of post-war Tokyo, a city occupied by the 'Victors' or Americans.

As usual, Peace's novel is based on fact, a police investigation into the death of young Japanese women amid the murky background of a city coming to terms with its surrender and loss of face. It's a gripping tale, with intrigue around every destroyed street, but someone really needs to tell Peace that less is more.

With Brian Clough, the central figure of The Damned United, Peace's stream of invective is perfectly suited, as is his unique prose, but it's less effective on this occasion. At its worst, the relentless repetition and broken and interrupted sentences, the verbal tics and poetic tricks, can appear infantile, and while that completely misses the point of the writer's craft, there is so much of it that it gets in the way of the story.

I'm a big fan of films no longer than 90 or 100 minutes (there are too many self-indulgent directors making unnecessary epics) and the same applies here - with a bit of judicious editing, perhaps as much as 50 or so pages merely containing repetition could be cut without losing anything of the claustrophobic atmosphere. It's obviously intended to be an uncomfortable read, but I can't help wondering whether it had to be quite so tough.

So, rating time:

#42 Tokyo Year Zero, by David Peace (Faber and Faber Limited) - 6/10

Next up: Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, by PG Wodehouse (Penguin Books)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating