The Mantis – Kotoro Isaka (Audio narrated by Brian Nishii and Pun Bandhu)

I am so sad to read the last of the Assassin series by Kotaro Isaka.  I came upon them on Audible and each was original, funny, gruesome but not graphic, and found a way to both make us appreciate good versus bad assassins, We ansi learn about the way they become “stuck” in this career.  You can’t have the knowledge that comes with being a hit-person and say you want to retire.  This is what Myakisan has learned, having worked for twenty years as Kabuto, a professional assassin.  Ever since the birth of his son Katsumi, now on the brink of graduating from high school, Kabuto has been telling his handler, a doctor in a neighborhood clinic, that he wants out.  Katsumi has an irritating relationship with his wife, in that he desperately wants to please her at all times.  But despite the fact that it is annoying, it is also a deft description of one of the players  in a three-person family and is often funny, certainly pathological.  

The doctor keeps trying to assign “high risk surgeries” to Kabuto, i.e., assignments to kill other professional assassins.  He tries to reject them as he wants to live for his family.  But they pay so well and the doctor keeps suggesting he needs more capital to retire.  We follow a few examples of his trade as well as a very funny brush with nature at one point.  There is so often humor in the characters themselves.  Kabuto was already doing this work when he married, while also going to his day job as a salesman in an office supply store.  He is so fundamentally attached to the idea one should be fair in everything, that he tries to be fair to the people he is killing.  Kabuto’s relationship with his son is a huge part of the novel and also engaging.  

All in all, Isaka’s trilogy involving completely different casts of characters in each novel was a lot of fun to read and he succeeds in the reader walking away with affection for at least some of the professionals we encounter.  I might even reread the series, although they are all mysteries to solve.  Just for the storytelling, the characters and the writing.