Stepper Book

Victor Stepper - an enigmatic, Germanic casanova - is Moscow's main man in Japan. His skill as a seemingly pro-Axis journalist, and his talent for winning friends and lovers, helps him procure a steady stream of intelligence for the Comintern before and during World War II; in this he is assisted by three other Tokyo spies. But Stepper's careful attention is the glue holding the Tokyo mission together, and, when he falls in love, and into alcoholism, things start to come undone.

The above synopsis sounds like fairly conventional spy novel fare, but Castro's book is not what one might expect from the genre. It has its erotic encounters and some moments of frisson, but Castro eschews the typical propulsive, carefully-calibrated plot in favour of an epic rise-and-fall arc. Excluding its contemporary frame, the book spreads itself over 30 years, from 1914 to 1944. We appreciate the devilish charm, skill and drive of our hero on the rise, and feel the sadness and sense of lost possibility that attends his fall.

Castro also employs a more meditative and impressionistic style than his generic counterparts. Action is interspersed with introspection and lyrical description. We flit through time, and from character to character, catching glimpses of their souls but never entirely understanding them.

While Castro does meet with some success in this style, and it is certainly an intellectually appealing conceit (a cast of spies that hide themselves even from the reader), it is eventually a source of considerable frustration. Ironically, the characters with which the book most often dwells - Stepper and Japanese-prince-cum-communist-agent, Isaku Ishigu - are the most inscrutable of all.

Stepper's lapse into alcoholism and rash risk-taking is difficult to make sense of and seems contrived to help bring about a fall that the author had already decided upon. Ishigu's behaviour is even more baffling. It is not the bafflement of a carefully-constructed mystery - Ishigu, more than any other character, attempts to explain himself - it is, rather, the bafflement of inconsistent characterisation on Castro's part.

Stepper has its virtues. It occupies a time and place not usually visited by the genre, and we are rewarded with vivid pictures of a Tokyo torn between tradition and modernity. The atmosphere of Tokyo's bars and embassy soirées is as deftly evoked as that of its temples and tea houses. The under-stated eroticism of Stepper's love affair is appealing, and we come to feel a real sense of sorrow for his lover. Castro's description of the bombing of Tokyo is a flash of particular brilliance.

However, in the final assessment, Stepper is a little too elliptical, self-consciously writerly, and vaguely plotted, to grip the reader. If the elements mentioned elsewhere have piqued your interest, and if you're looking for something literary, it's worth the read, but don't expect an unputdownable thriller.