Tom Lynch

When Isaac Adamson was in the fourth grade, his father made him a promise--get straight A's, and he gets an electric guitar. Through diligent work and a small amount of sympathy from his teacher, the guitar was in his hands at the end of the term. But, as he explains, he "picked it up, tried to play a D chord, and was like, `this sucks.'"

Billy Chaka is sort of similar. The wise-ass journalist who consistently finds himself in bundles of trouble returns as Adamson's protagonist in "Kinki Lullaby," the author's fourth installment of the punk-noir series, all set in a dreamlike, though mostly accurate, Japan. One could visualize Chaka with that guitar, goal achieved, and feigning humorous reluctance when he realizes he's in over his head. Chaka's that kind of hero.

Though Adamson insists he's no Chaka, glints of that sort of flair seem to hover above him. "It's kind of a funny thing," says the 33-year-old as he sips his bronze lager in Wicker Park's Small Bar, "because obviously for your character to have a thought, it means it has to first go through your head. I think in a lot of cases, especially with these hard-boiled character types, you can tell it's written by guys like me--just regular, haven't-been-in-a-real-fight-since-high-school guys. It's partially wish fulfillment."

The author speaks quietly, with a humble tone one might not expect from the Billy Chaka creator. His low-key demeanor, matched with his subtle giddiness and Chaka-esque wit, takes a moment to decipher, until you realize he's the boy next door. His books have gathered a small fan base, and each of them--"Tokyo Suckerpunch," "Hokkaido Popsicle," "Dreaming Pachinko," and now "Lullaby"--effectively combine mystery noir, anime, and a sense of screwball comedy, all set in the bizarre underbelly of Japan. Adamson, who hadn't visited the country until after his first book was completed (he took the advance money to fund a trip there, and used his time to correct inaccuracies before it was published), still doesn't understand his fascination with the culture. "I've never been able to come up with a reason for it," he says. "I guess when I was young, I took karate and stuff. My parents were sort of non-practicing Buddhists so we had all this literature around the house. I mean, I remember watching "Shogun" when I was little and everything." How far did he get in karate? "I got up to red belt, and then I started skateboarding."

Although Adamson can't describe the reason for his personal attraction towards the Eastern setting, his fans assume he's fanatical. "People write me emails thinking I've been this raging Japanophile for years," he says. "They're like, `what's your favorite manga and all that, and I'm like, `I don't know.' None of that was really available when I was growing up, not like now, how it's everywhere. I'll watch anime once in a while, I'll pick up a manga title here and there if I recognize something someone said was really good. I didn't grow up reading comic books, and even though I appreciate them now, I think it helps growing up and reading that stuff."

Instead, Adamson grew up reading Stephen King, the "Encyclopedia Brown" series and, obviously, choose-your-own-adventure books. He was raised in Fort Collins, Colorado before moving to Boulder for school, and then made his way to Chicago eight years ago because he "just kind of wanted to leave Colorado because I grew up there and been around there forever. I had some friends who lived in Chicago, New York, and L.A., and my friends here were the only ones who had jobs and weren't complaining about rent all the time." Adamson majored in film studies at the University of Colorado before he switched gears to writing, a transition he insists came naturally to him. But with writing comes research, especially when your setting is a foreign country you've never visited.

"I tend to research as I write," Adamson says. "If I run into problems, if I wonder about something, I'll have to look it up. This particular book I had to do a lot of research on. I kind of write without an outline or anything, and panic after about a hundred pages because I don't know what's going on." Part of his research entailed dissection of Japanese newspapers, which, he says, during the writing process he reads more than local papers like the Trib. That, and actually traveling East. "Japan was intense," he says. "It was more than what I thought it was. I wish I could go there more." During his most recent trip to research "Kinki Lullaby," Osaka officials, all willing to assist him in his investigation of the land, met him with open arms. "They wanted to know plot details of the book, which was really in an embryonic stage at that point. They wanted to know if I was portraying the city in a bad way." The officials even provided an interpreter. "I don't speak fluent Japanese," says Adamson. "I know tons of nouns, but no verbs."

Part of the appeal of the Billy Chaka series is the small, idiosyncratic aspects of Japanese culture Adamson injects into his mysteries that seem wildly outrageous at first, but absolutely believable after brief Internet inquiry. "When I was writing the first two books," he says, "I really went for those sort of things. And there's stuff that I've found lately that I know people just won't believe. But sometimes I feel I'm focusing too much on the sensational aspect of it. But every week there's some strange story... they just have some of the most bizarre stuff going on."

The author, who studied in the school of Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson--the "great dead guys"--doesn't see a relocation to Japan in his future. "I think the window of my life where that would've worked has kind of passed by now. I mean, I'm married. My wife's entire family is here. Maybe if I hit the jackpot I could go live there for a year. That would be cool."

The second floor of the Webster Place Barnes & Noble brims with Saturday afternoon word-hunters, but only a modest number sip their coffee and watch Adamson read from his new one. He begins his reading with a "letter" from President Bush, which he explains he got in the mail after he sent the White House a copy of "Kinki Lullaby." Adamson has the crowd going for a bit, until the joke kicks in, where Dubya pulls a Mike Tyson with significant word and phrase misusage. Applause. "I was just trying to think of something to do instead of just going up there reading," he says later, giggling. "I was watching the debates and I just decided to do it, off the whim of a hat, as George might say."

The comedy has always been a major part of his approach. "It just kind of comes out," he says. "Every time I start out thinking `Alright, I'm just gonna do a straight noir thing,' but it's like I can't help it, so I make some wise-ass joke. It just keeps it interesting for me writing it, too. I think most of the time you're not gonna be able to entertain anyone else if you can't entertain yourself."

Adamson continues the reading with an explanation of the book, where Chaka finds himself on the receiving end of a journalism award in Osaka, where an American turns up murdered in the hotel room beside his, where he, inevitably, is caught up in the mix and has to solve numerous mysteries at once. He reads a passage from the first chapter, calm, easy, hushed. A few spectators videotape him. "I get nervous a little bit," he says, "especially for the first reading. Some stuff is tailor-made for it, like David Sedaris or something, but when you're reading a mystery novel, you're kind of restricted to reading the first passage or chapter."

He explains that he rushed over to the B & N after a day of work at his part-time job, at Evanston's Legacy.com, which hosts online obituaries for newspapers across the nation. He screens the open forums where people can write to the bereaved. "We have to screen all of them because people seem to like bringing up family-feud stuff," he says. "It's like, `I'm John's other son,' and stuff like that. It's a great job, voyeuristically."

He continues with another passage from the book, this one a later episode where Chaka is visited by the hotel detective, a man with a prosthetic ear Chaka can't stop staring at. "David Lynch in my favorite filmmaker," Adamson says, citing him as an inspiration to the book. "I listened to the `Eraserhead' soundtrack while writing this last one, which isn't much music, more industrial sounds."

The filmic quality of Adamson's adventures didn't go unnoticed in Hollywood, as Fox Searchlight optioned the author's first, "Tokyo Suckerpunch," a few years back. Since then, the executive who was behind the project left the company, and Tobey Maguire came along, and with a partnership with Sony, nabbed the rights. Today the project, though still breathing, sits on a shelf, as Adamson hears updates from Hollywood only a few times a year.

Right now, the future remains unclear for Chaka. Adamson is currently in the developmental stages of a non-Chaka noir. "I'm kind of walking away from that for a while. I'm working on a book that's a mystery thriller, part historical fiction that has nothing to do with Japan. Most of it will probably be set in Prague. I'll come back to it possibly, if I get an idea that will be perfect for Billy Chaka, or something happens in Japan that I get really excited about, or they make the movie and the series really takes off."

And if Spidey decides to put on his journalist gloves and take a turn as Chaka, is Adamson up for scripting? "I don't know about the script," he says. "For that book there would be so many things I want to correct about it, but in a sense, I would sort of want to see what someone else would do with it. I'll just be happy if they make it, I don't care if it's horrible. Well...I probably would care."

(2004-10-13)

Also by Tom Lynch

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