Kōtarō Isaka pulls Ladybird in for one more simple job in Hotel Lucky Seven, the fourth book in his assassins series. Of course, for the assassin with the world’s worst luck, nothing is ever simple. Just like in Bullet Train, Ladybird’s simple job—to deliver a painting to a man in a specific room in Tokyo’s Winton Palace Hotel—escalates into fights to the death, chases, escapes, and intersecting plots. Brian Bergstrom does a beautiful job translating the original Japanese into kinetic English.
The first thing that goes wrong for Ladybird is that he shows up at the wrong room. The second thing that goes wrong is that the man in the wrong room attacks Ladybird. The man falling on a table and dying from the resultant head wound is the third thing that goes wrong. If Ladybird had showed up at the correct room the first time, none of what followed would’ve happened. Ladybird’s bad luck, however, ends up being extremely good luck for Yuka Kamino.
Kamino is in the process of trying to escape the long reach of her former employer, Inui. Inui has been using Kamino’s perfect memory to “store” his secrets. All of his passwords, accounts, and criminal acts are indelibly written into her brain. Kamino has turned to Koko, an elderly woman with a gift for hacking to leave the city and disappear. To stop her from fleeing, Inui has dispatched the Six—a monstrous group of assassins armed with blowguns and too much self-confidence—to recapture her. Ladybird is on his way out of the Winton Palace when he lands right in the middle of things.
Like Bullet Train, Hotel Lucky Seven is a series of fight scenes that only pauses for brief philosophical discussions between Ladybird and various characters or moments when Ladybird’s bad luck shows up to screw him over yet again. I was highly entertained by all of it. I could see the action playing out in my head as if it was taking place on screen, down to having Brad Pitt playing Ladybird. The plot isn’t quite as complex as in Bullet Train, but there are still plenty of twists to marvel at. Readers will enjoy watching Ladybird and his terrible luck at work again.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.