The Way of the Traitor

June 2, 1997
In the port of Nagasaki in the year 1690, the prosperous Japanese power elite is doing quite well from trade, although the arrival of the Dutch makes everyone nervous. To diminish the possibility of attack, the Dutch are confined to a small section of the city and local citizens are told that contact with foreigners is a treasonable offense. Into this poisonous atmosphere steps Samurai Sano Ichiro, the shogun's Most Honourable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People. While gathering information about the disappearance of Jan Spaen, the Dutch Trade Director, the steadfast and competent Sano, last seen in Shinju, believes he's being set up for a fall by a highly placed enemy, a possibility foreshadowed by the beheading of a traitor in the opening pages. When Spaen is found murdered, Sano suspects the murderer is a local, and, even though it means adding to an atmosphere already thick with tension, the Samurai can't let the truth go. He must employ all his skills to maintain balance as tries to bring the killers to justice while saving his own neck, struggles to remain loyal while satisfying his own curiosity about the outside world, and determines if justice is worth the price even as he pays it. As the Dutch declare their insistence that the killer be found by training their ship's guns on the city, Sano's predicament intensifies. The collision of East and West is compelling, but Rowland's bland prose and disappointingly predictable solution ill serve her story's central conflict.

May 1, 1997
In 1690 Japan, the ruling shogun's jealous chamberlain curtails the power of the shogun's favorite samurai detective, Sano Ichiro, by sending him to faraway Nagasaki. Sano immediately risks life and limb to discover how a Dutch trader escaped confinement and wound up murdered. Since Japanese paranoia decrees isolation of Western "barbarians," strict trade regulation, persecution of Christians, and samurai adherence to code, Sano's investigation is fraught with multitudinous dangers. Anything that can happen does--deceit, arson, assault, mayhem--with constant action compensating for any lack of subtlety, depth, or originality. Exciting, exotic entertainment from the author of Bundon (LJ 2/1/96).

April 15, 1997
Too many period mysteries often seem like history lessons clumsily disguised as novels. On the other hand, there is Rowland's Sano Ichiro series, starring the greatest detective in Japan (circa 1690): well constructed, superbly written, and very entertaining. Some novelists who write about Japan--James Clavell, for instance--overwhelm the reader with detail. This third Ichiro novel, in which Sano investigates the murder of a Dutch merchant, is full of information about life in Japan during the samurai era, but--as in the films of the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa--the information flows naturally from the story and never once intrudes on it. Like Lindsay Davis' novels about Marcus Didius Falco, the Roman private eye--or, indeed, like Umberto Eco's classic, "The Name of the Rose" Rowland's novel is, above all, an excellent whodunit. Highly recommended for all mystery fans. ((Reviewed April 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)