Night Butterfly (signed & dated)

Nora James, an American doing linguistics research in Japan, agrees to substitute for a friend as a hostess in one of Tokyo's elite night clubs, where convicted war criminal Akira Takasugi mistakes Nora for a spy

Danger dogs every step of an ingenuous, uncommonly fortunate American student and her streetwise Japanese soon-to-be lover in McFall's promising mystery debut. Nora James, a tall blonde Californian fluent in Japanese, moonlights as a hostess at Tokyo's Club Chocho while preparing her linguistics dissertation. Scheduled to meet corrupt businessman Akira Takasugi at the club one night and certain he will exhibit formal, chauvinistic speech patterns vital to her studies, Nora stashes a voice-activated tape recorder in her purse and goes to work. Unknowingly, she incriminates herself as a foreign spy, and before long Takasugi's goons whisk her to a Kyoto lab where dissidents are subjected to torture and drug experiments. Nora's only hope of salvation is handsome Kyoto resident Kenzaburo Nishi, who befriended her at the club while he was staking out Takasugi. Nishi's expose of Takasugi's yakuza connnections, his alliance with convicted WW II criminals and his cruel treatment of Takasugi Industries' employees is about to go to press. By the time Nora and Nishi get together, they are both targets of a deadly nationwide dragnet and are able to trust no one. International intrigue, near-escapes and an innocent gaijin' s feelings of exclusion amid exotic surroundings characterize this high-energy suspense tale.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A first mystery in which Japanese gangsters, the CIA, and an American linguistics student, who's earning her fare home as a hostess at the Club Chocho, lead each other a lively chase--a chase that moves from Tokyo to Kyoto and back again. Gathering various dialects for her graduate research, pretty Nora James surreptitiously tapes some of her nightclub customers, who then kidnap her and bring her to the headquarters of Mengele-like drug experimenter Mitsumori, working under the orders of the nefarious Takasugi. But Nora escapes into the arms of another customer, Nishi Kenzaburo, whose manuscript exposing the druglord has been stolen. On the lam, the two run afoul of radical terrorists, more torturing gangsters, and, of course, CIA operatives who swear they're the good guys but leave plenty of room for doubt. Several deaths later, Nora and Nishi again find themselves in the Club Chocho--and barely flee with their lives. The fanciful plot strains belief, but McFall renders Japanese customs, manners, mores, etc., with much charm. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.