The Ninja's Daughter
A Hiro Hattori Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Autumn, 1565: When an actor's daughter is murdered on the banks of Kyoto's Kamo River, master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo are the victim's only hope for justice. As political tensions rise in the wake of the shogun's recent death, and rival warlords threaten war, the Kyoto police forbid an investigation of the killing, to keep the peace--but Hiro has a personal connection to the girl, and must avenge her. The secret investigation leads Hiro and Father Mateo deep into the exclusive world of Kyoto's theater guilds, where they quickly learn that nothing, and no one, is as it seems. With only a mysterious golden coin to guide them, the investigators uncover a forbidden love affair, a missing mask, and a dangerous link to corruption within the Kyoto police department that leaves Hiro and Father Mateo running for their lives. From the Trade Paperback edition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Spann's fine fourth whodunit set in 16th-century Japan (after 2015's Flask of the Drunken Master), Fr. Mateo vila de Santos, a Portuguese priest who has been living in Kyoto, and Hattori Hiro, a ninja spy and assassin who was hired anonymously to protect Mateo, are roused in the middle of the night by Jiro, a merchant's apprentice. Jiro fears that he's responsible for the strangulation murder of Emi, a teahouse girl, with whom he was sitting by the Kamo River when he passed out. When he woke up, she was dead. Emi's status as an actor's child makes her, in the eyes of the law, a nonperson whose death doesn't call for any investigation. Mateo and Hiro's inquiry plays out against political turmoil at the highest levels after the alleged suicide of the former shogun. While not at the level of the best of Laura Joh Rowland's series set in Japan a century later, this entry is an improvement over Spann's earlier installments.
