Strawberry Yellow
A Mas Arai Mystery
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Curmudgeonly Japanese American gardener and unwitting detective Mas Arai is back in this fifth in the Edgar Award–winning series. Naomi Hirahara has created a memorable protagonist unlike any other: a Hiroshima survivor, Los Angeles gardener, widower, gambler, grandfather, and solver of crimes. In Strawberry Yellow, he returns to the strawberry farms of his youth and encounters family intrigue, danger, and murder.
The series' most compelling and evocative mystery yet is set in the strawberry fields of Watsonville, California, where young Mas first arrived as a Hiroshima survivor in the 1940s. He returns for the funeral of a cousin and quickly gets entangled in the murder of a young woman. Was his cousin murdered, too? Mas has to figure out what happened, keep himself safe, and uncover the mystery of the Strawberry Yellow blight and a new strawberry varietal so important that it could be inspiring a murderer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the outset of Edgar-winner Hirahara's engaging fifth whodunit featuring retired Japanese-American gardener Mas Arai (after 2010's Blood Hina), Arai mourns the loss of second cousin Shug Arai, one of his few relatives in the U.S., who has expired of an apparent heart attack. Shug, a strawberry breeder in Watsonville, Calif., was known as Dr. Strawberry, due to his talent for developing new varieties of the fruit. After the bloody body of Laila Smith, an environmental activist concerned about genetically modified food, is found in Shug's greenhouse, the dead man's widow confides to Mas her suspicions that he, too, was murdered. Both deaths may be connected to the development of a new strawberry strain. An earth-shattering discovery made by Laila shortly before she was killed adds to the intrigue. Parts of the story stretch credulity, but Hirahara again wisely makes her unusual lead and most unlikely sleuth the focus.
