The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteria (Sano Ichiro Mysteries)
Samurai sleuth Sano Ichiro has a very personal motive in determining who  killed the shogun's heir apparent with a hairpin: he's trying to save himself  from being executed for the crime.The Pillow Book of Lady Wisteriaintroduces readers into Yoshiwara, the  well-ordered but cruel pleasure quarter of 17th-century Edo (Tokyo), where the  corpse of Lord Mitsuyoshi is found sprawled on a bed. The woman with whom he'd  spent his final hours, a top-ranking courtesan known as Lady Wisteria, has  disappeared, along with her private journal, which might supply clues to her  complicity in this slaying. In the absence of both, and with the capricious old  shogun ordering that Mitsuyoshi's family not be quizzed about his death, Sano is  left to look for assassins among the courtesan's attendants and prominent  clients. Meanwhile, Sano's enemies vie for credit in solving the murder (even if  they must pin it on Sano), a woman's headless body is found wearing Wisteria's  kimono, and Sano's amateur investigator wife, Reiko, threatens to discover the  link between her samurai and the enigmatic prostitute.Laura Joh Rowland cooks up wonderfully knotty plots. Yet it's her renderings of  Sano's world--with its Machiavellian politics, exotic fashions, and hierarchical  communities--that make her series particularly interesting. Although this  seventh installment lacks the cinematic violence of its immediate predecessor,Black Lotus, it still  makes you glad to be observing shogunate Japan from afar.--J. Kingston  Pierce--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.