The Fire Kimono (Sano Ichiro Series #13) »

LAURA JOH ROWLAND is the author of twelve previous Sano Ichiro thrillers, including The Snow Empress, which Publishers Weekly chose as one of the Best Mysteries of 2007. She lives in New Orleans.

Japan, March 1700. The strife between Sano Ichiro, the samurai detective who has risen to power in the shogun’s court, and his enemies has escalated to the brink of war. Called away from the crisis by the shogun’s orders to investigate a mysterious skeleton, Sano and his wife, Reiko, must confront dangerous, long-buried secrets. What was Sano’s own mother doing on the night when a burning kimono ignited a blaze that nearly destroyed the city? The shogun gives Sano and Reiko just three days to find out—or risk losing not only their position at court but their families’ lives as well.

Publishers Weekly

Set in 1700, Rowland's outstanding 13th Sano Ichiro mystery (after 2007's The Snow Empress) finds Sano, whom the shogun raised to the rank of chamberlain several books back, waging a fierce struggle with his chief rival, Lord Matsudaira. The stakes are raised at the outset when Matsudaira's forces almost succeed in killing Sano's wife and occasional sleuthing partner, Reiko. The chamberlain soon suspects that someone else may have been behind the attack, but soon he faces a more daunting task-proving his mother innocent of the murder of one of the shogun's cousins, who vanished during the great fire that destroyed much of Edo and whose skeletal remains were just uncovered by chance. Sano must now question everything he thought he knew about his mother, with his own family facing execution should she be found guilty. Rowland has given her hero his greatest challenge yet in this suspenseful look at feudal Japan. (Nov.)

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