AN ATTRACTIVE young woman, attempting to evade retribution for a morally dubious act, becomes the prey of an unstable man. There are echoes of Hitchcock’s Psycho in the plot of Jones’s second novel, not least of which is the way that the author enlists our sympathy for Runa, her central character.

The opening chapters, set in a small provincial town in Japan, describe Runa plotting her escape from the school where she has allowed herself to become entangled in an amour fou with one of her pupils, a 16-year-old boy. Fearing that the affair is about to become public knowledge, Runa steals her sister’s passport and heads for the nearest port, hoping to take refuge with a girlfriend in Shanghai.

Interspersed with this account of Runa’s flight are chapters seen from the point of view of Ralph Turnpike, a middle-aged Englishman who has come to Japan in search of a “mail-order” bride. The grotesque contrast between the ageing and unattractive prospective bridegroom and the young and beautiful girls whom he imagines he will be able to attract provides the author with opportunities for some blackly comic writing. A chapter set in the offices of the Tokyo dating agency where Ralph has gone to choose his new wife — only to find that none of the women whose details have been matched with his wants anything to do with him — offers one such moment. Its savage humour is unmitigated by any vestige of pity for the rejected man. Ralph, it is clear from the start, is a creep and a loser, whose character is as unpleasant as his looks. If the novel — otherwise flawlessly plotted — has a weakness, it is in making this so obvious.

The last section takes place on board the ferry to China on which Runa and the odious Ralph have both fetched up. Here, in the company of various other outsiders and social misfits, including a couple involved in a sado-masochistic gay relationship, they while away the time playing cards and taking part in karaoke contests. At this point, as elsewhere in the novel, Jones conveys an authentic flavour of contemporary Japanese life with a minimum of descriptive detail. With no less skill, she creates a mood of growing paranoia, so that by the end neither the reader nor the unfortunate Runa knows who among her fellow passengers is to be trusted.

It would be wrong to give the game away: suffice to say that this reviewer had some very vivid nightmares as a result of finishing this book late one evening. If the author, adept as she is at building suspense, had only concealed her intentions more thoroughly, she might have made the book’s ending as surprising as it is shocking.

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