Convenience Boy and Other Stories of Japan (Rei Shimura Series)

Description

A collection of Rei Shimura stories previously published in paper form by Sujata Massey. In this mini-book, Rei Shimura solves 3 very different mysteries. The title story, "The Convenience Boy," tests Japanese romantic rituals in an unexpectedly humorous way. "Junior High Samurai" sends Rei back to her teaching roots as she becomes entwined in a bullying incident. "The Deepest Blue" is a poignant exploration of the conflict between family love and ambition. This 50-page trilogy is a must for anyone who wants everything related to Rei Shimura.

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A collection of Rei Shimura stories previously published in paper form by Sujata Massey. In this mini-book, Rei Shimura solves 3 very different mysteries. The title story, "The Convenience Boy," tests Japanese romantic rituals in an unexpectedly humorous way. "Junior High Samurai" sends Rei back to her teaching roots as she becomes entwined in a bullying incident. "The Deepest Blue" is a poignant exploration of the conflict between family love and ambition. This 50-page trilogy is a must for anyone who wants everything related to Rei Shimura.

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Shimura Trouble (Rei Shimura Mysteries (Paperback))

Description

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Zen Attitude

Description

Life in modern Tokyo is a blast for Rei Shimura, a young Japanese-American woman who enjoys busy days as an antiques dealer and steamy nights with a devoted new boyfriend. But things come to a standstill when Rei overpays for a rare old chest of drawers for a wealthy client, the owner of a famous Zen temple in Kamakura. The exquisite tansu turns out to be a fake: the worst deal Rei has ever made. When the temple family turns on Rei -- and the con man who sold the tansu is murdered -- she realizes she's opened a Pandora's box of deception and murder. A young martial artist, an aspiring rock singer, and an elderly antiques mentor all become part of Rei's search for the killer through the shadows of an ancient culture. As her world begins to rapidly and inexplicably unravel, Rei realizes that it will take strength, wit, and a Zen attitude to survive.

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The Typhoon Lover (Rei Shimura Mysteries)

Description

A young woman with a foothold in two cultures, Rei Shimura has gone wherever fortune and her unruly passions have led her throughout her chaotic twenties. Now, after the streamers for her thirtieth birthday celebration have been taken down, the Japanese-American antiques dealer and part-time sleuth finds herself with an assignment to find and authenticate an ancient Middle Eastern pitcher that disappeared from Iraq's national museum.

The piece is believed to be in the hands of a wealthy Japanese collector, whose passion for beauty extends to Rei herself. But when a devastating typhoon hits Tokyo, Rei is trapped with the object of her investigation—and with much much more than the fate of an ancient pitcher at risk.

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Girl in a Box (Rei Shimura Mysteries)

Description

Chronically underemployed Japanese-American sleuth Rei Shimura has taken a freelance gig with a Washington, D.C., alphabet agency that just might have ties to the CIA. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, is to go undercover as a clerk in a big Tokyo department store. It's a risky assignment, but it also gives Rei a store discount that allows her to freely indulge her shopaholic tendencies.

Meanwhile, she's listening in on private conversations, crashing a conference, and fending off the unwanted advances of a couple of the store's executives who seem fascinated by her navel ring. When her cover is blown, Rei is in big trouble. Suddenly she's neck-deep in something very nasty, and it will take all her resourcefulness and unorthodox methods to survive a determined killer.

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The Flower Master

Description

Life in Japan for a transplanted California with a fledging antiques business and a nonexistent love life isn't always fun, but when the flower arranging class Rei Shimura's aunt cajoles her into taking turns into a stage for murder, Rei finds plenty of excitement she's been missing. Unfortunately too many people have a reason for committing the crime--her aunt included. While struggling to adjust to the nuances of Japanese propriety, trying to keep her business afloat, and dealing with veiled massages left under her door, Rei sifts the bones of old skeletons to keep her family name clear--and her own life safe from an enemy with a mysterious agenda. If Rei doesn't want to be crushed like fallen cherry blossoms, she's going to have to walk a perilous line and uncover the killer with a dramatic flare for deadly arrangements.

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Rei Shimura, a twentysomething Japanese American antiques dealer, returns for a third outing in Sujata Massey's series set in Japan (Zen Attitude, The Salaryman's Wife). In The Flower Master, Rei's former boyfriend has left Japan, and her antiques business is only slightly more successful than her love life. Then she's dragooned by her aunt Norie into enrolling at a famous Tokyo ikebana school. Rei's not a natural at the ancient art of flower arranging, but she has a talent for sleuthing, which comes in handy when the head teacher at the Kayama School is found dead--with a pair of flower shears exactly like the ones Norie gave her lodged in her neck.

Rei's efforts to find the killer and unravel the secrets entwining her Tokyo family with the Kayamas move the action along, but the real mystery is whether the budding romance between the California girl who can't quite find her place in the tradition-bound society of modern Japan and the handsome environmental activist slated to take over as iemoto (headmaster) of the school will flower into lasting love. Intrigue and multiple murders spice the romance, along with a fascinating explication of ikebana's enduring history. Rei is a lively protagonist who brings the reader along for an entertaining and subtle lesson in Japanese culture as well as in the dangers involved in digging up buried family skeletons. --Jane Adams

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