OCCUPIED CITY

A man walks into a Tokyo bank, and when he walks out, 12 of its 16 employees are dead.

Jan. 26, 1948. Both the war and the subsequent American occupation are a few years old. Since beaten and dispirited people do not go in much for healthy skepticism, it’s perhaps unsurprising that when a plausible stranger enters the Shinamachi branch of the Teikoku Bank at 3:30 on a Monday afternoon, he needs not much more than a decently cut business suit and what might be construed as a doctor’s bag to establish his bona fides. There’s dysentery in the area, he announces. He’s been sent by Tokyo’s welfare ministry to distribute the appropriate medication. Can the entire staff be assembled? It can, and in an atmosphere that borders on sheep-like acceptance, he administers the so-called immunization. The result: almost instant mass-murder. All 16 employees are felled; 12 die, the rest are hospitalized; and their killer exits a rich man. Though more than a hundred detectives are assigned to this stunning crime (based on an actual one), early leads are essentially useless. The plausible stranger seems to have appeared out of nowhere and vanished into nonexistence. When at length an arrest is made, the evidence ranges from flimsily circumstantial to downright dubious. Moreover, it becomes apparent that there’s a fierce, hard-edged resistance to closer examination. Is that because there’s an ugly connection to certain dehumanizing biological-warfare experiments highly placed people are determined to keep hidden? Of course it is.

Powerful and ambitious, this British import is deepened by a multiperspective, Rashômon-like approach. But reader be warned: The immensely talented Peace (Tokyo Year Zero, 2007 etc.) is not in the business of making his work easy.