3 Assassins

Suzuki is just an ordinary man until his wife is murdered. When he discovers the criminal gang responsible, he leaves behind his life as a maths teacher and joins them, looking for a chance to take his revenge. What he doesn't realise is that he's about to get drawn into a web of unusual professional assassins (the titular 3 Assassins), each with their own separate agendas. • The Whale convinces his victims to take their own lives using just his words. • The Cicada is a talkative and deadly knife expert. • The elusive Pusher dispatches his targets in deadly traffic accidents. Suzuki must take each of them on, to try to find justice and keep his innocence in a world of killers. == Development ==

In an interview with The Japan Times, Three Assassins English translator Sam Malissa described Three Assassins as "Kōtarō Isaka calling out the thriller genre but [a]lso playing with the reader and the complicity of creating an illusion to invite people into the world of story and fabulations. In Japan, there’s quite a divide with books funneled to the pulp lane or the serious lane, but Isaka is riding that line between entertainment and more serious fiction, playing with those boundaries and pushing against that division. I’m always appreciative when artists straddle lanes or push boundaries like he does." Comparing the novel to Isaka's sequel novel Bullet Train (translated to English years ahead of its preceding novel), Malissa said that "Three Assassins goes deeper, so there’s more psychological exploration of the characters, which adds nuanced sophistication to the action." == Reception ==

The Japan Times praised Three Assassins as a "rollicking good time", together with Bullet Train "showcas[ing] Isaka’s versatility as a writer and his skill as an entertainer, forging his own path as he merges literary fiction with high-octane fun." with Hot Press complimenting it as a "Triple Tokyo Terminator Throw Down!", and The Irish Examiner expressing interest in the novel being adapted as a sequel to the 2022 Bullet Train film. Contrasted to Bullet Train, The New York Times lauded "Three Assassins [a]s a sparser, sourer thriller, its slow pursuit distending across Tokyo and leaving plenty of time for dread", concluding that as a "surrealist fable disguised as a crime novel, “Three Assassins" feels like a fever dream that makes sense when you’re in it, but whose strange contours linger long after you wake up." == Adaptations ==

Manga adaptation A manga adaptation drawn by Hiroto Ida was published from 2008 to 2010 on Kadokawa Shoten's Young Ace magazine, and later collected in three volumes. Film adaptation The novel inspired a Japanese film adaptation, Grasshopper, directed by Tomoyuki Takimoto and starring Toma Ikuta. The film was released theatrically on November 7, 2015. == References ==