Amazon.com
The face of remarkable actor Toshiro Mifune might insist on looming up before your eyes as you read this engrossing new historical mystery about a rogue samurai warrior named Matsuyama Kaze ("Pine Mountain Wind" ) roaming through rural Japan in 1603--the year that began the long, oppressive reign of the Tokugawa Shogunate. In the first book of a planned trilogy, Dale Furutani first introduces us to Kaze in a scene straight from the Gregory Peck movie "The Gunfighter," as the wily, middle-aged samurai outwits a young challenger. Then, on the road to the country village of Suzaka, Kaze and a local charcoal seller find the body of a stranger, pierced by an arrow. The local lords are quick to pin the crime on a bandit chief, Boss Kuemon, but Kaze's investigation points to a less obvious killer. Telling his subtle, strong story, Furutani conjures up compelling images: "As he walked along the path, Kaze looked at the splashes of blue sky peeking through the woven branches of the trees. It was a constantly changing mosaic that recalled the intricately painted patterns on the expensive Satsuma porcelains he knew from his youth." Furutani's two modern mysteries,
Death in Little Tokyo (which won an Anthony for best first novel) and
The Toyotomi Blades, are available in paperback.
--Dick Adler
From Publishers Weekly
The Anthony and Macavity Award-winning author of Death in Little Tokyo (1996) and The Toyotomi Blades (1997) moves back in time with his third mystery, a quietly reflective historical puzzler set in early-17th-century Japan. Matsuyama Kaze is a ronin?an unaffiliated, wandering samurai?whose personal history is gradually revealed as he investigates the murder of an unidentified man whose corpse is left near a remote mountain village. Interrupting his mission to find the missing daughter of his Lord and Lady, whose deaths came in the revolt that led to the oppressive centuries-long rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Matsuyama gradually weaves himself into the fabric of daily life in the region. He exercises his samurai skills in martial arts, in cultivated patience and in cunning intelligence through which he understands the obvious and hidden links among the local peasants, the petty village officials, its Lord and the band of local outlaws whose power has recently increased. Furutani surely and gradually creates an atmospheric setting in this increasingly compelling story, casting in the hero's role a figure who manages to embody with utter credibility both compassion and ruthlessness. This is the first tale in a projected trilogy, and readers will look forward to the second installment.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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