Novelists all have different motivations to write. For Kotaro Isaka, an award-winning mystery writer whose books always rank high on Japan's bestseller list, it's the constant "fear" of something calamitous happening — whether it be a North Korean missile attack or an outbreak of an unknown flu virus — that keeps him writing.
In October last year, "Remote Control," the English-language version of Isaka's massively popular 2007 book "Goruden Suranba" ("Golden Slumber"), was published by Kodansha International.
The book depicts in thrilling detail how Masaharu Aoyagi, a young, good-looking, good-natured ex-delivery truck driver in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, suddenly finds that he is being framed for the murder of the Japanese prime minister. Aoyagi tries to escape, but it's no easy mission, as he has to elude not only trigger-happy police officers — who somehow target him only moments after the assassination — but also "security pods," which have been set up throughout the city to monitor citizens' mobile-phone transmissions and record video of all street traffic.