Collector of Secrets

Starred review from June 8, 2015
After living in Tokyo for a year, American Max Travers, the hero of Goodfellow’s stellar debut, wants to quit his job teaching English, but Yoko, the unethical and manipulative owner of the language school he works for, refuses to return his passport in a ploy to get him to stay in Japan. When Max breaks into Yoko’s office late one night in an attempt to retrieve it, he finds burglars already there ransacking the place. In the chaos that follows, he grabs a satchel that turns out to contain a journal kept by a prince who was Emperor Hirohito’s first cousin. It details decades of imperial Japan’s plunder of Southeast Asia’s most valuable treasures during WWII. Suddenly on the run from the Yakuza mob and the Japanese police, Travers must stay alive long enough to understand the mind-blowing scope of the conspiracies revealed within the diary. Relentlessly paced, meticulously plotted, and richly described, this is a page-turner of the highest order.

July 1, 2015
A fast-moving and well-researched debut thriller filled with intrigue, conspiracies, and Japanese culture. American Max Travers teaches English in Tokyo, working for an unpleasant woman named Yoko. Her father, Mr. Murayama, possesses an old diary written by Prince Takeda during World War II, and the yakuza will gladly kill to get their hands on it. If the entries in the diary are true and become public, "the effect on Japan would be terrible and the royal family would be ruined." A former Japanese diplomat is murdered, and then the killings continue. Meanwhile, Max tries to quit his job and go back to the U.S., but for nefarious reasons, Yoko withholds his passport. When he breaks into an office in an attempt to retrieve it, the yakuza are already there, looking for the diary-which Max somehow winds up with, putting himself and his girlfriend, Tomoko, in grave danger. He's "unable to shake the feeling that both his and Tomoko's lives, their fate, had somehow become fused with that of Prince Takeda himself." Like it or not, it seems the accursed diary will become Max's destiny. In a Dan Brown-ian touch, an anagram of an American character's name is a key plot detail. Max and Tomoko are a likable duo facing plausible, scary situations that will keep readers turning the pages. The plot is filled with action, the details are rich and colorful-not many stories include a Shinto priest who owns a video game company-and the writing is by and large decent. The ending leaves enough uncertainty to invite a sequel. An enjoyable first novel that never bogs down as it races to a satisfying finish. Bring on the next installment of Max Travers adventures, please.

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July 1, 2015
From the WWII occupation of the Philippines to tattooed yakuza in contemporary Japan, Goodfellow's action-packed thriller is full of international intrigue. American Max Travers is disenchanted with the for-profit school in Tokyo where he has been teaching English, but when he tries to sneak his passport out of the director's office, he ends up taking a small diary that holds information about some of the twentieth-century's most closely guarded secrets (including the JFK assassination). Max and his girlfriend, Tomoko, race to decipher just what exactly it is they're holding on to and what it could mean if it fell into the wrong hands. Novice thriller readers could get whiplash from the switching between the many characters and supershort chapters, but fans of fast-paced conspiracy capers will happily hold on for the ride. Goodfellow spent two years teaching English in Japan and wrote this debut on the road after his return to the U.S.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)