The Wrong Goodbye

A classic slice of Japanese hard-boiled noir paying homage to the master of the genre: Raymond Chandler\r\n\r\nThe Wrong Goodbye pits homicide detective Eiji Futamura against a shady Chinese business empire and U.S. military intelligence in the docklands of recession Japan. \r\n\r\nAfter the frozen corpse of immigrant barman Tran Binh Long washes up in midsummer near Yokosuka U.S. Navy Base, Futamura meets a strange customer from Trans bar. Vietnam vet pilot Billy Lou Bonney talks Futamura into hauling three suitcases of goods to Yokota US Air Base late at night and flies off leaving a dead woman behind. \r\n\r\nThereby implicated in a murder suspects escape and relieved from active duty, Futamura takes on hack work for the beautiful concert violinist Aileen Hsu, a boat people orphan whose Japanese adoption mother has mysteriously gone missing. And now a phone call from a bestselling yakuza author, a one-time black marketeer in Saigon, hints at inside information on former Vietcong mole Tran and his old sidekick Billy Lou, both of whom crossed a triad tycoon who is buying up huge tracts of Mekong Delta marshland for a massive development scheme. \r\n\r\nAs the loose strands flashback to Vietnam, the string of official lies and mysterious allegiances build into a dark picture of the U.S.-Japan postwar alliance. \r\n\r\nTranslated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum