One cinematic treat that 1998 turned out was "Ringu," which was the rarity of a well-worked, intelligent horror flick that won broad appeal among movie fans who ordinarily look askance at efforts in the horror genre. Four years later, "Ringu" gave rise to an even rarer bird in the form of "The Ring" -- the almost-unheard-of case of a Hollywood remake that didn't manage to butcher the life and soul out of the original.
With the recent publication of "Loop," the English translation of the trilogy that Koji Suzuki began with "Ring" sees completion. An international reading audience can now appreciate the novelistic underpinnings of the commercially and critically successful films.
In its basic story line, the first novel in the trilogy will be familiar to many: A visually disturbing video induces sudden heart failure in whoever watches it, exactly one week after the viewing. The two main protagonists, Asakawa and Takayama, who have seen the tape, need to solve the mystery of the video's curse before their allotted time runs out, the stakes for Asakawa being so much higher since his wife and young child are also threatened. "Ring" is a fine, tightly constructed horror mystery that in itself is a perfectly satisfactory, self-contained novel, leaving the reader to decide for himself the outcome beyond the final page.