Review – Remote control

Remote Control

by Kotaro Isaka

Masaharu Aoyagi, a former delivery-truck driver in the city of Sendai, is unemployed. Two years ago he achieved brief notoriety for rescuing a local actress from a robbery attempt while making a delivery to her apartment. Now he is back in the spotlight – this time as the main suspect in the assassination of a newly elected prime minster who had come to Sendai for a hometown victory parade.

Set in a near-future Japan modeled on the United States, Remote Control follows Aoyagi on a forty-eight-hour chase, in a dramatic retelling of the Kennedy killing with Aoyagi in the role of a framed Lee Harvey Oswald. A massive manhunt is underway. As Aoyagi runs, he must negotiate trigger-happy law enforcement and Security Pods set up throughout the city to monitor cell-phone and email transmissions and keep a photo record of street traffic. Can he discover why he has been set up and who is responsible? Can he find the real assassin and prove to the world his innocence – amidst media pronouncements of his guilt – before the conspirators take him out?

This book started out slow but the pace picked up a fourth of  the way in. Once the pace picks up you become completely engaged as you wonder what happens next.

The ingenuity of the plot is cunning. Each twist and turn has you guessing at what exactly is going to happen next. I thought I knew how the book ended, but I was wrong.

The way the author presents things as “all is not as it seems” is masterful. I began doubting what I knew about halfway through the book. The first fourth of the book is devoted to the chase as seen through the eyes of the media. The rest of the book is the actual chase as lived by Masaharu Aoyagi.  If anything else, this story proves that the media doesn’t always portray the truth.

This was a very enjoyable cat and mouse romp.

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