Akitada Mysteries Series

Still grieving the death of his small son, Akitada risks career, freedom, and family to rescue an abused child from a life of misery.  The search for the boy's family leads to a harrowing story of love, murder, and abandonment.  Meanwhile, his faithful servant Tora loses his new wife to a powerful man who pursues beautiful women and will stop at nothing to posses them.  The trails of both cases lead to the prostitutes and courtesans of the amusement quarter, and murder soon follows.

The capital is plagued by unexplained fires, and panic threatens to break out, but Akitada has his own problems to worry about.  His ailing wife expects a child and he loses his job to a political appointee. When he tries to confront the nobleman who is responsible for his dismissal, he ends up suspected of his murder.  With no income and a growing family to support, Akitada desperately plunges into the investigation of this crime and a search for a missing youth, while Tora tracks a gang of young arsonists.  These seemingly unrelated cases converge, and before Akitada can uncover the sinister plot behind the fires, he almost loses his own life and those of his wife and newborn child.

On a journey to Naniwa to unmask officials who are selling information to pirates, Akitada witnesses the recovery of a body from the river.  The image of the drowned child prostitute follows him as his own problems and disasters multiply.  Someone is sabotaging his investigation. His young clerk disappears, Akitada is attacked by thugs, and armed men brutalize his family in the capital. When Tora joins his master in Naniwa, they both fall into the hands of the pirates and must fight a battle to the death to escape.     Yet ultimately it is the tragic story of the dead girl that will haunt Akitada most.

A.D. 1030.  Senior Secretary Sugawara Akitada is recovering from a knife wound and still reeling from the loss of his wife. When the Council of State orders an investigation of the claims of two warring temples, he is sent to Otsu to clear up the matter. As it happens, Akitada's best friend Kosehira is governor there and welcomes Akitada into his large and cheerful family in hopes of healing his mind and body. But almost immediately, the murder of a judge interferes with both the official assignment and the planned relaxation. When other murders follow and the local authorities express endless faith in his skills, Akitada gets on the trail of a serial killer. Meanwhile, the violence simmering among the monks escalates. When Tora is attacked and held by them, Akitada must use his diplomacy to release him, but the incident sends Tora and Saburo on a desperate and dangerous mission in the mountains.  To make matters worse, the lonely Akitada has fallen in love with his friend's nineteen-year-old daughter, an impossible situation that nearly drives him to distraction.

Intended to become the emperor's concubine, she died at the bottom of a cliff near Prince Atsuhira's private villa.  The palace covered up the scandal.  Months later, Akitada is drawn into the case when his best friend is accused of treason.  Atsuhira, his alleged co-conspirator, refuses to defend himself. The mystery of the lady's death unravels slowly, bringing danger to Akitada, whose household is already threatened when an ill-fated relationship between Genba and a prostitute leads to his arrest for the brothel keeper's murder.  Surrounded by a cast ranging from outcasts and assassins to noblewomen serving in the inner apartments of the imperial palace, Akitada not only delves into murky palace secrets, but his efforts to solve two murders require him to examine the many roles played by women in his society. 

An unexpected and dubious promotion sends Akitada to Kyushu, an outpost where illegal trade with China breeds treason and murder. Leaving behind his family, he faces obstruction and hostility at his new post and learns his predecessor, a man of expensive tastes, has disappeared under suspicious circumstances. As Tora and Saburo delve into the underworld of Hakata, Akitada tracks a ruthless traitor.  The brutal murder of the Chinese wife of a doll maker sets into motion events that leave a trail of bodies. Worse, as the number of unexplained deaths mounts, Tora also disappears.  Untangling the skeins of intrigue, Akitada follows leads from the seductive attention of a beautiful courtesan to the secretive business world of Chinatown and discovers that doing his duty has an even higher price than expected.

After the loss of his wife and newborn son, Akitada returns home, ostensibly to care for his motherless children, but really to withdraw from the world into his grief. When his friends and family join in an effort to draw him out of his seclusion by tempting him with a mystery, he responds halfheartedly until he becomes intrigued by the young woman's alleged suicide and the slipshod way in which the police investigated.  But more serious problems arise: he faces dismissal and punishment for having left his last post without permission. Then Tora and Saburo are arrested for the murder of a gambler. Their dilemma forces Akitada to delve into the world of a gangster boss who controls gambling and prostitution, and this time Akitada will not escape.  

Fifteen years after the brutal murder of an imperial prince, the crime casts its shadow on Akitada’s family. The case is cold and the assassin dead, but his young wife’s brother wants to marry the assassin’s daughter, and Akitada is expected to clear his name. Worse, in doing so he must either destroy a friend’s reputation or his own marriage. As Akitada searches for the truth among other suspects and unravels the secrets of the past, he stirs up fresh murder and shatters his own happiness.

From the Shamus Award winning author comes a new mystery set in Imperial Japan. In the autumn of 1033, Sugawara Akitada spends his last year as governor of Mikawa Province amidst reports of piracy and concerns about an uprising. He grieves over his troubled marriage and worries about the murder of the daughter of a local lord. As if things could not be worse, an investigator from the capital arrives to build a case of malfeasance against him, and when he and Tora decide to check into irregularities along the Tokaido highway, they uncover a conspiracy that points to one of Mikawa’s powerful overlords and find themselves in real danger.

When an imperial princess disappears from the Ise shrine, Akitada, new governor of Mikawa Province, has barely had time to settle there with his family before he is dispatched by imperial order on a secret assignment to find her. The world Akitada finds at Ise turns out to be anything but spiritual. The pilgrimage town is a murky, dangerous place where no one can be trusted and where someone wants him dead. Gangs of robbers work the roads and forests, and two young women are murdered within days of each other. Although Akitada’s mission becomes known, putting his life in jeopardy, he persists with the unlikely help of a dwarf. Meanwhile, Tora and Saburo, left to look after the new province in their master’s absence, get involved in local problems and jeopardize Akitada’s new appointment and his career

A governor's life is not an easy one. It is spring when everything starts going wrong for Akitada. The town is full of unruly festival visitors, three brutal murders remain unsolved because the suspects depart, and two rice merchants plot to defraud his administration. When his own trusted retainer rebels and embarks on a murderous vendetta, complaints multiply and Akitada faces not only dismissal but his family turns against him. In a desperate attempt to redeem himself, he risks not only his career but his life.

On the eve of the Tanabata Festival, a warrior rides into a family gathering to slaughter the members of a high-ranking family and their guests. Akitada, whose best friend is among the victims, searches for a shadowy killer who may be part of a secret conspiracy against the emperor himself. In his determination, he defies orders, involves his friends and his sister, and puts his family in danger. Meanwhile, his faithful retainer Tora risks life and limb in a world of thugs and prostitutes to solve the bloody murder of a schoolmaster's wife. Both will suffer the consequences of pursuing ruthless adversaries who are determined to ruin or kill them. 

In this Shamus-Award-winning short story, the young Akitada becomes a detective when a father asks him to find his daughter. To Akitada’s dismay, the young woman has been murdered and the suspect is a convenient peddler. But this seems all wrong, and Akitada persists in his search for the real killer though it involves great risks to himself. 

Murder doesn’t take holidays, and neither does Akitada.  In this small collection of three short stories, Akitada solves crimes on New Year’s Day, during the O-bon festival of the dead, and on the occasion of the Tanabata festival celebrating the meeting of celestial lovers.  As a bonus, a chapter describes the Kamo festival from RASHOMON GATE.  These exotic whodunits mix detection with the customs of a fascinating culture.  

Delving into the past can be as dangerous as interfering in someone else's business. Akitada unravels the dark secrets of a poet who drowned six months earlier in a remote mountain region. Was his death an accident or murder? His wife, an imperial princess, demands an investigation and the prime minister issues an order. As Akitada probes into the victim's final days, his friend Tora becomes entangled in a shopkeeper's murder and uncovers the corruption and brutality of the capital police. Both men will unleash savage retaliation and nearly lose their lives as they search for answers.