Shinju - Softcover

Rowland, Laura Joh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061009504 ISBN 13: 9780061009501

Publisher: HarperTorch, 2001

Synopsis

When beautiful, wealthy Yukiko and low-born artist Noriyoshi are found drowned together in a shinju, or ritual double suicide, everyone believes the culprit was forbidden love. Everyone but newly appointed yoriki Sano Ichiro.

Despite the official verdict and warnings from his superiors, the shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People suspects the deaths weren't just a tragedy -- they were murder. Risking his family's good name and his own life, Sano will search for a killer across every level of society -- determined to find answers to a mystery no one wants solved. No one but Sano...

As subtle and beautiful as the culture it evokes, Shinju vividly re-creates a world of ornate tearooms and guady pleasure-palaces, cloistered mountaintop convents and dealthy prisons.

Part love story, part myster, Shinju is a tour that will dazzle and entertain all who enter its world.

About this title

About the Author:

Laura Joh Rowland came to writing by accident, having first gained a degree in microbiology and a masters in public health, and then working as a chemist and microbiologist. She is the author of more than a dozen acclaimed murder mysteries, particularly the Sano Ichiro series set in feudal Japan and featuring samurai detective Sano Ichiro. The granddaughter of Chinese and Korean immigrants, Laura Joh Rowland grew up in Michigan and now lives in New Orleans.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A shinju is a double love-suicide--precisely what the deaths of noblewoman Niu Yukiko and peasant artist Noriyoshi aren't, despite first appearances. But then what are they? That's the question for Sano Ichiro, newly appointed Senior Police Commissioner of Edo (17th- century Tokyo). When a doctor sentenced to service in the Edo morgue convinces Sano that Noriyoshi, at least, was killed before he entered the water in which he and Yukiko supposedly drowned themselves, Sano feels honor-bound to follow up the clue. But with no evidence-- autopsies are illegal and can't be used to prove anything--and no support from his boss or his patron, Sano doesn't know where to turn. Yukiko's cold stepmother listens to him politely and then has him thrown out; Noriyoshi's employer, a dealer in erotic art, insists he doesn't know anything; and Sano's journey to visit Yukiko's sister, who just might be able to help him, in the nunnery to which she's been banished only ends in disaster. As Sano pieces together the reason for Noriyoshi's death--he was blackmailing a Kabuki actor, a street wrestler, and perhaps others--his higher-ups close ranks against him, and he finds himself, in an eerie Japanese echo of Presumed Innocent, stripped of his job and hunted for murder. Even after he's pieced together the puzzle, how will he able to convince the authorities whose interest is in keeping him quiet by whatever means? This impressive first novel features a plot that's perfectly adapted to its historical background: Sano's growing terror of humiliation and dishonor comes across much more keenly than any contemporary setting would allow. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperTorch
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0061009504
• ISBN 13: 9780061009501
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448