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First Sentence
The path was rocky and the horse's hooves slipped on the wet stones. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
The path was rocky and the horse's hooves slipped on the wet stones. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
We are by now used to crime novels set in past times and different cultures: ancient times, medieval, renaissance, in China, Japan, Australia, France. The stories draw from the time setting and the cultural environment to feed both the plot and the atmosphere, trying to provide an enhanced reading experience. Many of these crime novels fail nevertheless to hide the fact that, as a crime novel or as a book, they are second rate, and the added value of the exotic location or unusual setting is not enough to please the reader.
This is not the case with Akitada's novels: the Japan of the 11th Century provides an interesting setting, which to me as a layman seems solid and well researched. But more importantly, it also work as a crime novel, and as a work of fiction. The story can be considered as a traditional crime novel: a murder, a young detective, the investigation, questioning, etc. The plot is interesting, well structured and captivating. But the real added value can be found in the characters and the relationships between them. Particularly Akitada, a multi-dimensional character that is endearing and captivating. I can only recommend it; I really had a good time reading it.
This is not the case with Akitada's novels: the Japan of the 11th Century provides an interesting setting, which to me as a layman seems solid and well researched. But more importantly, it also work as a crime novel, and as a work of fiction. The story can be considered as a traditional crime novel: a murder, a young detective, the investigation, questioning, etc. The plot is interesting, well structured and captivating. But the real added value can be found in the characters and the relationships between them. Particularly Akitada, a multi-dimensional character that is endearing and captivating. I can only recommend it; I really had a good time reading it.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In a dramatic opening scene, a woman and an unconscious man wait in the darkness of a monastery cell for the woman's lover, who arrives bearing the body of a another young woman. Annoyed when her lover shows signs of weakness and has qualms about beheading the corpse, the woman begins the gory process herself. The reader quickly becomes caught up in the action as a former official in the Justice Department, also spending the night at the same monastery, begins an investigation into the murder. Clever deduction, additional gory murders, threats to the life of the investigator, and his single-minded dedication to unmasking the murderers, while combatting professional jealousies among his peers, make this an exciting addition to the traditional murder mystery genre.
Only the structure of the novel is traditional, however, for this murder takes place in eleventh century Japan, and the detective is Lord Akitada Sugawara. Seen primarily as a family man, he is fully drawn, a man with foibles and failings, in addition to high ideals of honor. As Akitada investigates the murder, the author subtly develops the intellectual climate of the times: the use of hell screens in Buddhist monasteries to instill the fear of death, the value placed on antiquities and the scholarly life, and the integration of art (calligraphy, painting, elaborate embroidering, and flute-playing) into the lives of the characters. Customs, including the payment of dowries, the leaving of paper messages at local shrines, the social separations between classes, funeral and mourning customs, and the obligations of the aristocracy to the court, combine gracefully with period details, even including the kind of straw raincoat and headcovering worn by travelers, and the number of finely made, colorful silk gowns worn under a woman's kimono.
Intelligent and impelled to action more by his passions than by his sense of duty, Akitada comes alive, while his "helpers"--Tora, a former soldier, and Genba, a former wrestler--add liveliness, spark, and comic relief to the novel. Tora falls in love with an acrobat/actress, and Genba falls for the immense owner of an athletic training hall, a wonderful character named Miss Plumblossom, who is an expert in stick-fighting. The author's ability to reveal emotion through gestures (a hand on a servant's shoulder and the servant touching the fingers in return) is matched by her ability to describe scenes of humor, love, and torment. In short, she recreates life in its beauty and sorrow as lived by characters with whom the reader will feel a kinship, despite the unusual setting in another country over a millennium ago. Mary Whipple
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is the fifth outing for Sugawara and for me the best yet. These novels only get better with each story. It isn't just Sugawara that captures our attention it is the other collection of Characters that surround him. His manservant Tora and the gruff Kobe for whom I have a growing fondness and in this novel we meet the redoubtable "Miss Plumblossom". I didn't read some of the other reviews before I read the book as they give away too much of the plot so all I will say about this Sugawara story is that it is a cracking good read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
a good read.
HI,NOW THIS ONE OF THE BOOKS YOU CAN NOT PUT DOWN ,EVEN IF YOU SHOULD.AND ITS TIME TO GO TO SLEEP.A VERY GOOD MYSTERY INDEED,SET IN EARLY JAPAN,GRIPPING PLOT,VIOLENT,GOOD... Read more
Published 8 months ago by tony
Hellish screen
I.J. Parker's "Rashomon Gate" was a solid, multilayered mystery that strays away from the typical twentieth-century American/British settings. Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2006 by E. A Solinas
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