The Way of the Traitor: A Samurai Mystery - Hardcover

Rowland, Laura Joh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679449000 ISBN 13: 9780679449003

Publisher: Villard, 1997

Synopsis

In a novel with echoes of Noble House, The Alchemist, and Gorky Park, Japan's preeminent detective-Samurai, Sano Ichiro, returns to risk his honor and life. In 1690 Nagasaki, Sano must crack his most sensitive case yet as he sets about to discover who killed a Dutch trader whose body has washed up on the shore of a small island famed for its "barbarians."

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ith echoes of Noble House, The Alchemist, and Gorky Park, Japan's preeminent detective-Samurai, Sano Ichiro, returns to risk his honor and life. In 1690 Nagasaki, Sano must crack his most sensitive case yet as he sets about to discover who killed a Dutch trader whose body has washed up on the shore of a small island famed for its "barbarians."

Reviews

Packed off to a routine inspection of remote Nagasaki by a jealous chamberlain bent on curtailing his access to his lord, samurai detective Sano Ichir is hardly off the boat when trouble strikes. Jan Spaen, the Dutch East India Company's missing director of trade, is found dead on a chilly beach, and his restless companions aboard a Dutch ship riding in the harbor have to be pacified while Sano investigates his murder. His superiors on Nagasaki--Governor Nagai and Ohira Yonemon, chief officer of the island compound of Deshima--want to disarm the Dutch, but Sano, made uneasy by the unfair treatment of the foreign barbarians and drawn by his budding friendship with the ship's surgeon, allows them to keep their weapons--a serious mistake, he realizes, when the evidence points to a Japanese killer and the Dutch commander threatens to attack the city, starting a full- scale war, unless Sano brings him the head of the killer within two days. Meantime, though, Sano's unearthed a smuggling ring whose leaders seem to be the city fathers, who promptly frame him for smuggling, arrest him, and remove him from the investigation. Will Sano finally be hamstrung by the conflicting demands of his roles as detective, avenger, diplomat, vassal, and man of honor? Of course, he won't. But tension rides high as Rowland (Bundori, 1996, etc.) takes every clich‚ of the One Just Man genre--the civic conspiracy, the prostitute in love, the impossible deadline, the massacre of innocents, the man on the run--and refracts them all through the code of Bushido. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Too many period mysteries often seem like history lessons clumsily disguised as novels. On the other hand, there is Rowland's Sano Ichiro series, starring the greatest detective in Japan (circa 1690): well constructed, superbly written, and very entertaining. Some novelists who write about Japan--James Clavell, for instance--overwhelm the reader with detail. This third Ichiro novel, in which Sano investigates the murder of a Dutch merchant, is full of information about life in Japan during the samurai era, but--as in the films of the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa--the information flows naturally from the story and never once intrudes on it. Like Lindsay Davis' novels about Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman private eye--or, indeed, like Umberto Eco's classic, The Name of the Rose Rowland's novel is, above all, an excellent whodunit. Highly recommended for all mystery fans. David Pitt

In 1690 Japan, the ruling shogun's jealous chamberlain curtails the power of the shogun's favorite samurai detective, Sano Ichiro, by sending him to faraway Nagasaki. Sano immediately risks life and limb to discover how a Dutch trader escaped confinement and wound up murdered. Since Japanese paranoia decrees isolation of Western "barbarians," strict trade regulation, persecution of Christians, and samurai adherence to code, Sano's investigation is fraught with multitudinous dangers. Anything that can happen does?deceit, arson, assault, mayhem?with constant action compensating for any lack of subtlety, depth, or originality. Exciting, exotic entertainment from the author of Bundon (LJ
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Villard
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679449000
• ISBN 13: 9780679449003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 307