An effective whodunit that’s also a sensitive coming-of-age story.
When a young Japanese American woman is murdered during World War II, her grieving younger sister turns sleuth to solve the crime.
As she tells it, the story of young Aki Ito’s family begins in Southern California in the 1920s. Mom emigrates from Japan in 1919 to marry Pop, who, starting as a farm laborer, rises to the post of market manager. Aki looks up to her elder sister, Rose, the star of the family. The bombing of Pearl Harbor changes everything for the family; they are sent to the Manzanar internment camp in 1942. Then, in June 1943, the War Relocation Authority recruits Rose to be one of the "loyal" nisei to move out of the camp and work in Chicago. Her boyfriend, Roy, follows a few months later. When the family is finally allowed to follow, they are greeted with the horrifying news that Rose is dead, killed by a subway train. Aki’s decision to uncover the truth about Rose’s death comes slowly. Hirahara immerses readers in this ignoble period in American history and in the family’s grief, presented from Aki’s wary, wide-eyed perspective. Learning that Rose had an abortion accelerates Aki's desire to know the truth. She’s unsettled even further when Rose’s death is ruled a suicide. Subsequent chapters begin with passages from Rose’s diary, providing a chilling backdrop to the truth that is gradually revealed. Getting a job at the Newberry Library puts Aki closer to the heart of the city and exposes her to the casual racism all around her. Roy’s failure to offer support and the fear and evasiveness of Rose’s roommate, Tomi Kawamura, only harden Aki’s determination to find answers. Her investigation becomes her rite of passage into adulthood.
An effective whodunit that’s also a sensitive coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-641-29249-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: June 1, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.
Lt. Eve Dallas and her colleagues in the New York Police and Security Department step outside their comfort zone into counterterrorism.
Back in 2024, during the stressful time of the Urban Wars, a courageous band calling themselves The Twelve fought Dominion and other violent fringe groups that sought to end civilization as we know it, despite the presence of a traitor in their own midst. Now, 37 years later, someone’s killed Giovanni Rossi, a retired cybersecurity expert who was one of The Twelve, an hour or so after a summons—ostensibly from another veteran of the group—brought him from Rome to New York. On the body, officers called to the scene find a copy of Dallas’ business card that’s been embellished with a flamboyant threat to annihilate the seven surviving members of The Twelve. Obligingly inviting all seven to New York—a move you’d think would make it a lot easier for their nemesis to wipe them all out at once—Dallas soon forms a theory about the killer’s identity and sets a trap to draw him out. But her plan turns into a narrow miss, upping the stakes on both sides, for now the killer knows Dallas is on to him. It’s in the nature of the case that there’s less mystery and detection than usual in this long-running franchise—the biggest surprise turns out to be the connection between Dallas and her quarry—but the thrills keep on coming, and the final interrogation, though highly predictable in its broad outlines, is as satisfying as ever.
Forget the tangled backstory, focus on the game of cat and mouse, and enjoy.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370792
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2025
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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