β Scribed by Rowland, Laura Joh
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
May 1695. During a horse race at Edo Castle the chief of the shogun's intelligence service, Ejima Senzaemon, drops dead as his horse gallops across the finish lineβthe fourth in a recent series of sudden deaths of high-ranking officials. Sano Ichiro is ordered to investigate, despite his recent promotion to chamberlain and his new duties as the shogun's second-in-command. Meanwhile, Sano's wife, Reiko, is invited to attend the trial of Yugao, a beautiful young woman accused of stabbing her parents and sister to death. The woman has confessed, but the magistrate believes there is more to this case than meets the eye. He delays his verdict and asks Reiko to prove Yugao's guilt or innocence. As their investigations continue, both Sano and Reiko come to realize that the man he is trying to hunt and the woman she is desperate to save are somehow connected. A single fingerprint on Ejima's temple puts Sano on the trail of an underground movement to overthrow the regime, and in the path of an assassin with a deadly touch.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
### From Publishers Weekly At the start of Rowland's assured 10th historical set in 17th-century Japan (after 2004's *The Perfumed Sleeve*), Sano Ichiro, now the shogun's chamberlain and second-in-command, returns to his previous role of criminal investigator after the country's top spy, Ejima Senz
### From Publishers Weekly At the start of Rowland's assured 10th historical set in 17th-century Japan (after 2004's *The Perfumed Sleeve*), Sano Ichiro, now the shogun's chamberlain and second-in-command, returns to his previous role of criminal investigator after the country's top spy, Ejima Senz
SUMMARY: It is a lost art, passed down by the ancients in great secrecy: Dim-mak. It is death, by the lightest touch of a finger. Sano Ichiro, tenuous in the new regime as the shogunβs second-in-command, does not have the luxury of skepticism?another senior official is dead, a fingerprint lightly gl
### From Publishers Weekly At the start of Rowland's assured 10th historical set in 17th-century Japan (after 2004's *The Perfumed Sleeve*), Sano Ichiro, now the shogun's chamberlain and second-in-command, returns to his previous role of criminal investigator after the country's top spy, Ejima Senz
### From Publishers Weekly At the start of Rowland's assured 10th historical set in 17th-century Japan (after 2004's _The Perfumed Sleeve_), Sano Ichiro, now the shogun's chamberlain and second-in-command, returns to his previous role of criminal investigator after the country's top spy, Ejima Senz