The Devil of Nanking

I'm reading a book called "The Devil of Nanking" by Mo Hayder.

I feel like I should read more books, and that's why I borrowed this novel from Burwood Library. There were so many books in the library's fiction section and I didn't know what to get. Then the familiar name of "Nanking" caught my eye. There is a Japanese "no" mask on the cover of the book, which I think is pretty cool, too. People say you can't judge a book by its cover, but that's exactly what I do sometimes.

The title of the book sounds oddly familiar. I couldn't help feeling that Iris Chang's best selling book "The Rape of Nanking" might have inspired the author to write this book. I was correct. On page one, the author tells us she wants to dedicate this book to Iris Chang, "whose bravery and scholarship first lifted the name Nanking out of obscurity".

I've only read 40 pages and I can't really tell whether the book is good or not. But it certainly is an interesting book. The protagonist is in Japan, seeking a piece of film footage showing a specific horrifying incident during the Nanking Massacre. The intriguing part is that you don't know what the film footage contains exactly. All you know is that it contains something horrible, a secret that, was it to become public, would hurt.

Mo Hayder, the author, has a colorful resume. She had worked as a barmaid, security guard, filmmaker, hostess in a Tokyo nightclub, and teacher of English as a foreign language in Asia before she started writing novels. Some people say the best training for writing is living. That's certainly true in her case.