****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
The only thing "wrong" with this book is - it's the last in the series. I have read & enjoyed them all, and will probably re-read at least some of them. Well written. A few, mid-series, may have gone a tad hair "over the top" in the credibility factor - but they are such good reads, I didn't really mind. Some good historic detail on Japan, its culture, mores, dress of the period. etc.; seems well researched. Villains & heroes well fleshed-out, and motivations explored, human frailties & redeeming features. Some real "cliff-hangers" in the plots & plot twists. Readers follow the course of Sano Ichiro's life, from youth through courtship, marriage to a woman somewhat unconventionally raised (for the time), their eventual partnership in producing & raising progeny & solving crimes - many of which threaten them & their family. By the end of the series, one feels one knows many of the characters fairly well - quite an achievement or the author. Life & political machinations in the Shogun's court figure majorly in most of the stories, and some of the issues of living under an absolute dictatorship are frequently made evident. Sometimes the methods of "detecting" seem a bit concrete [like, a detective saying to a suspect, "Did you murder so-&so?"], but often there is also great subtlety in other areas of detection - and it all fits in with the sense of a foreign culture in which the characters reside - and into which the reader enters with them.
