(There’s a very funny scene in which two of the killers are obliged, owing to lack of elbow room, to partake in their first ever sit-down fist fight).īullet Train is published in English translation this week, and a film version starring Brad Pitt and Lady Gaga is in production. Like all the great train-based thrillers, the novel combines an exhilarating sense of forward momentum with the creepy claustrophobia that comes from being stuffed cheek by jowl with a load of strangers in a confined space. They range from Satoshi, a ruthless psychopath with the appearance of a cherubic schoolboy, to professional hitman Tangerine and his eccentric sidekick Lemon, who has a penchant for quoting lines from the Thomas the Tank Engine books.Īs the various killers compete to get hold of a suitcaseful of money, it soon becomes clear that not all of them will survive as far as Morioka. In this novel – which takes place in real time on a Shinkansen bullet train travelling from Tokyo to Morioka – every other passenger seems to be a killer. Have you ever looked at the person sitting opposite you on a train and wondered if they might be a murderer? I’m betting that thousands of Japanese commuters are doing just that every day, following the huge success of Kōtarō Isaka’s bestselling thriller, Bullet Train.
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