Kotaro Isaka is a Japanese novelist widely published in Japan. Many of his novels have been adapted for movies and TV, the most famous being this novel, which was recently adapted into a film starring Brad Pitt.
If you're arriving at this novel from the movie, you'll probably be expecting some kind of adrenaline soaked thrill ride. If so you'll be disappointed. Bullet Train is instead a very philosophical book hinged upon arguments between freewill and determinism, or between good luck and bad. It hits a few of the same notes as the movie, but the sleek, Hollywood actioner that many know from Netflix is a far cry from what Kotaro Isaka laid out on the page.
If you've read manga like Hunter x Hunter, something like that might be a more apt comparison. The author does write manga on occasion, and the parts of Bullet Train in which characters are forced to overcome a series of "traps" or dilemmas are much more similar to what characters encounter in the pages of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure or YuYu Hakusho.
The philosophical elements at play in Bullet Train have precedents in manga as well. Consider the weird, philosophical discussions of the Golden Ratio in Steel Ball Run for example, or similarly high-flown plot devices in other series. I'm not suggesting that Kotaro Isaka merely copied these things from manga titles, but there's a long history of such tropes in manga, and this should be taken into account when reading Bullet Train.
In the novel, as in the movie, several hitmen running conflicting errands are riding a high speed train through Japan. One pair of hitmen have been charged with returning a Yakuza boss's son to his custody, and also with returning a bag full of money. Another hitman has been charged with stealing this same bag of money, while a third hitman is trying to kill all of the other hitmen, and so on. None of these hitman have a clear idea of the larger forces working against them, and all are unaware that a psychopath sits in their midst, a young man who takes great delight in complicating their plans.
As novels go it's not quite riveting, though I did enjoy many of the chapters near the end. In my opinion this book's a bit too long for its own good, and the constant machinations regarding the case full of money grow tiresome. I also don't think the "Kimura" character was as fully realized as he could have been, even if "the Prince" is a truly masterful creation.
Were I assigning stars I'd give this one 4 stars out of 5. It's worth reading, even if it requires a bit of patience.
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