BOOK CLUB / SHIBUMI

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ABOUT THE BOOK:
Shibumi is a classic spy novel from bestselling author Trevanian, about a Westerner raised in Japan who becomes a high-powered assassin. With a tale that spans the globe, much of the thriller is set in the Basque Country in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Currently in pre-production at Warner Bros. for a film adaptation, Shibumi is sure to be an entertaining read on a cold winter night.

A REVIEW:
“The historical fiction angle drew me to the novel. I think Amazon suggested it, based on my past purchase of Shogun, or perhaps Istanbul Passage by Joseph Cannon. For that itch, Shibumi didn’t disappoint. The novel is well-researched and touches subjects, times and places where my knowledge is a bit thin or even non-existent. It had me Googling and checking Wikipedia as I read, and taught me quite a bit along the way.

At its heart, inside its historical fiction wrapper, Shibumi is a novel of international intelligence and espionage. A corporate overlord, the Mother Company, controls the world’s top intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA, MI-5, etc.) and arranges twisted and uncomfortable, but not unbelievable, plots to maintain its grasp on the western world’s energy and information. How twisted and uncomfortable? How about a CIA mission in which it slaughters members of an Israeli cell set on foiling a PLO-backed plane hijacking? The Agency even kills, by design, some of its own agents in the process. Despite being published nearly 40 years ago, this aspect of the novel is, sadly, nowhere near being irrelevant or even dated. Indeed, it seems as believable and relevant today as, I suspect, it was in 1979.” – J. Matt Buchanan (read the review HERE)