The Iris Fan by Laura Joh Rowland is the 18th mystery and finale of this acclaimed series set in feudal Japan, featuring the recently demoted Sano Ichirō whose last case will involve a brutal attack on the shogunate itself (available December 9, 2014). Japan, 1709. The shogun is old and ailing. Amid the ever-treacherous intrigue…
Good news: The science of genetics has come a long way since Gregor Mendel experimented with hybrid pea plants during the nineteenth century. Now we have the results of the ground-breaking Human Genome Project: a complete map of the 20,000-25,000 genes of the human species. Somewhere in all that data is the DNA coding for…
Some criminals live on as legends for many years after their demise. Three of my favorite examples are Bonnie Parker, Clyde Barrow, and Jack the Ripper. I saw the movie Bonnie and Clyde in 1967. Played by Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty, the outlaw lovers were all the rage. They made 1930’s depression-era fashion seem…
In 1993, Lorena Bobbitt shocked the world when she cut off her husband John’s penis and threw it out of her car window as she drove away from the scene. But she wasn’t the first woman to do this grisly deed. Tokyo, 1936. Sada Abe, age 31, a former geisha/prostitute, went to work as a…
Japan, 1703. On a snowy night, 47 warriors murder the man at the center of the scandal that turned them from samurai into masterless ronin two years before. Clearly this was an act of revenge—but why did they wait so long? And is there any reason they should not immediately be ordered to commit…
Historical mystery novels serve as a reminder that the good old days weren’t always that good. Especially for the folks accused or convicted of crimes. My Sano Ichiro samurai mystery series is set in 17th – 18th century Japan, occurring later in Japan’s 700-year “medieval” era. As I research and write my books, I constantly…
