Rating: 
Summary: The Queen of Hearts
Review: I was induced to get this book by reviews that called it a Pacific theatre *Casablanca.* While our leading man in Japan is American and owns a bar, and helps folk get out of Dodge (er - Tokyo) before the Stuff hits the Fan, that's about where the similarities end.What we have here is a Son Of southern Baptist missionaries, basically abandoned to a colorful Tokyo neighborhood in the 1920s whilst the Great White Salvationists traipse around saving "heathen" Japanese souls. Though looking foreign (gaijin,) our hero, Harry, may be more "Japanese" than some of the native-born Japanese he encounters in this taut tale of cultural collision that, through jolting jumps and flashbacks, takes him through December 8, (because of the time differential) 1941 in Tokyo. This is not the comparatively gentle off-screen menace of *Casablanca,* nor is it a "cozy" fireside read. There's a dude in here who would give the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Wonderland a run for her money: "Off with their heads!" (In graphic detail.)
Rating: 
Summary: Not up to Gorky Park or Polar Star
Review: I am a big fan of Martin Cruz Smith but this book is not on the same lever of Gorky Park or Polar Star. It just did not have the edge of excitement. More details of the Japanese strike or actions in the Japanese occupation of China could have increased my interest. Still, I hope his next release won't be too far off.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Cultural Perspective
Review: You will never think about Pearl Harbor and December 7, 1941 in quite the same way after you read December 6. You will also have a new appreciation of the gap between an embassy staff trying to understand the surface of a culture and the depth of experience and knowledge that is required to begin to truly understand another society. In fact, this book is as useful in helping to understand Japan in 1941 as it is for trying to understand our current challenge in dealing with the reactionary Wahhabi sect of Islam, the system of terror based on religious belief, and the isolation of Hezballah, Hamas, and Al Qaeda from the West. The core principle that language is only the first of many cultural differences is the key to understanding the challenge facing any diplomat or intelligence agent trying to penetrate and predict a truly different society. Martin Cruz Smith has created an American missionary's son who is as vivid and believable as any of the Russians in his Gorky Park series. Smith suggests that a young man who had grown up inside Japanese culture with Japanese playmates and fluency in the Japanese language would have a completely different understanding of the culture than the American embassy or missionaries who came as outsiders to change it rather than understand it. Smith creates an almost Humphrey Bogart like character in an almost Casablanca scene but with distinctly Japanese differences. He tells the story of a culture that believes in seppuku (ceremonial suicide), a culture which saw everyone not Japanese as not quite human (and therefore saw the killing of hundreds of thousands of Chinese as an event not worth noticing), and a culture which felt its very life being suffocated by the huge presence of the Americans across the Pacific and their potential ability to strangle Japanese society by cutting off the flow of oil. This is a culture very unlike Vichy, France and even more alien than the Gestapo and the Third Reich. You will find the personalities, the plot, and the scenes believable, engaging, and intriguing. Once started this is not a book you will want to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Harry Niles is a Winner
Review: There are few thriller writers that can evoke a place and time like Smith. When you hear about an author's exhaustive research to recreate not just the look but the experience of a place this is yet another good example of his talent as a writer. Just the choice of pre-Pearl Harbor Tokoyo is original. The character of Harry Niles owes alot to Casablanca's Rick Blaine and no doubt Smith had him in mind when writing. He handles the anti-hero well, slowly giving a piece by piece back story of why the reader should sympathize and eventually even root for Harry. That's hard to do as a writer, but Smith frequently chooses memorable main characters (Arkady of Gorky Park, Polar Star, Red Square and Havanna Bay fame is his best example)that are a bit on the dark side. The book is fairly fast paced. The introduction of an honorable but homicidal samauri from Harry's past raises the book to a new level of suspense. Even the descriptions of the ritualistic lopping of heads is fascinating. The love story angle is unconventional and Smith handles Harry's thoughts on the relationship perfectly. As with all his thrillers, the ending is wonderfully tense and unexpected. This is a "downward spiral" type plot where the reader knows the main character is heading deeper and deeper into trouble as things close in around him. But, Smith keeps the twists and rich descriptions at a level where the reader stays with him. December 6 is not as strong as Gorky Park or Rose, the latter being the high point with its totally original setting and beautiful writing, but from an always reliable writer it is strong stuff. How many writers are as reliably entertaining as Martin Cruz Smith: not many.
Rating:
Summary: Martin Cruz Smith's best novel to date
Review: Martin Cruz Smith has set his newest novel, DECEMBER 6, in Japan on the eve of Pearl Harbor. He tells the story of Harry Niles, the American son of missionaries who left him to grow up on the streets of Tokyo. Now a 30-year-old man, Harry owns the Happy Paris, a tearoom he transformed into a "...bar stocked with scotch instead of sake and a red neon sign...," in Tokyo's "Azakuza" district. The saloon is a hangout for Western journalists, a meeting place for expatriates, and a watering hole for those on the move through Japan. Harry, had a tough time growing up in the "Hell's Kitchen" area of Tokyo. Always a gaigin (a foreigner) among his schoolmates, he was never really accepted and was the target of the samurai and Shinto games they played. He calls himself a philosopher and says, "My talent is speaking more Japanese than most Americans and more English than most Japanese. Big deal." He is neither a Westerner nor is he Japanese. But Harry is an expert con man. He has his own business, he is part of a network of acquaintances and loves his mistress, Michiko. His life is full, and he is as content as anyone who lives the nightlife on the fringes of any society. Everyone Harry knows believes that Japan and the United States will go to war. The only question for them in December, 1941 is when. And although Harry thinks he has a plan to prevent an attack by the Japanese on Americans, he also has a ticket in his pocket for the last plane out of Tokyo. "Well, it may be petty of me," Harry declares, "but I still want to come out of this war alive." In alternating narratives of Harry the boy juxtaposed against Harry the club owner, Smith paints an extraordinary picture of life in Japan before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and captures the essence of that strange, exotic country on the brink of war. For the verisimilitude of DECEMBER 6 Smith says, "I was able to visit Japan with a guy I met who lived there during the time of the story...[and for his research he] reads newspapers of the time and memoirs of people who lived through the era [he is] writing about." Smith lives up to his reputation for presenting readers finely wrought suspense-thrillers. And, in DECEMBER 6, he goes over the top. His deft interweaving of an historical abomination with the romantic tale of a man without a country is both moving and thought provoking. Fans and newcomers to Smith's work will not be disappointed in this, his best novel to date. --- Reviewed by Barbara Lipkien Gershenbaum
Rating:
Summary: Japanese Cruz
Review: Colorful inside look at the 1941 Tokyo lifestyle through the eyes of a transplanted missionary's son who grows up, streetwise, more Japanese than American. A complex character, Harry Niles achieves a bar-owning, con man's reputation but has the same moral center as Rick in "Casablanca" (which this story greatly resembles). Maneuvering the plot through the days preceding Pearl Harbor is predicatable but Smith's always good writing style holds it together.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of character, setting, and story
Review: I found the book riveting from page one. It works on so many levels, from its atmospheric setting in Japan to its exciting story lines, set both in the childhood past of American Harry Niles and the present, the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the intriguing characters in the novel are what drive the story. Harry Niles is by far one of the most interesting characters I've encountered lately. So is his Japanese mistress, the unpredictable and scary Michiko. One of the most suspensful and delicious scenes in the novel takes place in a Willow House, where Harry is forced to make small talk and observe Japanese decorum while knowing he has just minutes to live. He has been lured to the Willow House by his lover, at first unrecognized because of her geisha makeup and demeanor. There, he encounters bitter enemy, Ishigami, the master swordsman who has sworn to behead him. Ishigami is like a cat playing with the mouse before pouncing. The reader cannot help but wonder throughout the book how Harry will survive. I read a huge number of books, both fiction and non, and this one is a gem. (Another great novel set around the time of WWII is Joseph Kanon's "The Good German"). December 6 is one of the few books that I will actually go back and reread, slowly, to figure out how the author managed to put it all together. Finally, as a response to the reader who claimed he was not an old white man and why should this book be on his "must read" list, I am not an old white man either. If a reviewer is going to give one star and a grumpy one-liner, but no concrete criticisms at all, his review enlightens no one.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must read...
Review: Im not an old white man...why is this book in my must read list?
Rating:
Summary: Okay
Review: An often interesting novel, but with Smith trying often unsuccessfully, and too hard, to be "literary." The similes and descriptions are often very awkward. It's basically a "Casablanca" in Japan: an expatriate American who owns a nightclub with no apparent loyalty to anyone, and has a plane to catch to get out of the s__tstorm before it hits the fan. With some good moments.
Rating:
Summary: Martin's Best So Far
Review: I've always liked Martin Cruz Smith's writing (Polar Star, Gorky Park)but thought he was a little unpolished but this is a superb novel and very well-researched. His use of flashback isn't quite up to La Carre's Perfect Spy. I would have liked to have seen more into the main character's youth, which was as fascinating as his adult adventures. This book, while too short, is well worth the price.
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