Ring - Koji Suzuki

The Inspiration for the New Major Motion Picture RINGS

A mysterious videotape warns that the viewer will die in one week unless a certain, unspecified act is performed. Exactly one week after watching the tape, four teenagers die one after another of heart failure.

Asakawa,
a hardworking journalist, is intrigued by his niece's inexplicable
death. His investigation leads him from a metropolitan tokyo teeming
with modern society's fears to a rural Japan--a mountain resort, a
volcanic island, and a countryside clinic--haunted by the past. His
attempt to solve the tape's mystery before it's too late--for
everyone--assumes an increasingly deadly urgency. Ring is a chillingly
told horror story, a masterfully suspenseful mystery, and post-modern
trip.

The success of Koji Suzuki's novel the Ring has lead to manga, television and film adaptations in Japan, Korea, and the U.S.