Review: Fires of Edo by Susan Spann

Review: Fires of Edo by Susan SpannFires of Edo (Shinobi Mystery #8) by Susan Spann
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Shinobi Mystery #8
Pages: 230
Published by Seventh Street Books on February 15, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Edo, February 1566: when a samurai’s corpse is discovered in the ruins of a burned-out bookshop, master ninja Hiro Hattori and Jesuit Father Mateo must determine whether the shopkeeper and his young apprentice are innocent victims or assassins in disguise. The investigation quickly reveals dangerous ties to Hiro’s past, which threaten not only Edo’s fledgling booksellers’ guild, but the very survival of Hiro’s ninja clan. With an arsonist on the loose, and a murderer stalking the narrow streets, Hiro and Father Mateo must save the guild—and themselves—from a conflagration that could destroy them all.

My Review:

The entire Shinobi Mystery series, starting with Claws of the Cat, takes place in feudal Japan beginning in 1564, at a time when few foreigners were permitted in the country. (For reference, 1564 was early in Elizabeth I’s reign in England, William Shakespeare was born and St. Augustine, the oldest continuously-inhabited European-established settlement in what is now the continuous U.S., would not be established until the following year.) More importantly, 1564 and the years following in Japan were a time of political upheaval, as the events that push the series forward frequently show.

This is particularly the case in Fires of Edo. Hattori Hiro and the man he has been hired to protect, Father Mateo Ávila of Portugal, have stopped at Edo (the future Tokyo) on their long journey from Kyoto to a location that is still under debate between the two of them.

Hiro is supposed to take Father Mateo to the safety of the Portuguese colony at Yokoseura – where Hiro can keep the man who has become his friend over the course of their association – safe. But Father Mateo does not have any desire to be “safe” and confined among his fellow countrymen. He wants to continue to explore Japan – because once he enters that sanctuary he may not be able to get back out.

But that safety starts looking pretty attractive during their entirely too eventful sojourn in Edo.

As they have made their rather meandering way across the country, Hiro has been carrying out a self-appointed mission for his ryu – the clan of shinobi (read as ninja) that raised him and trained him. The identities of his fellow agents have been compromised, revealed to Oda Nobunaga and the forces that support Nobunaga’s rise to control the shogunate (which eventually happened in 1568).

Hiro and Father Mateo have faced plenty of adventures along their journey, some begun by Father Mateo’s inability to keep from poking his nose in places it doesn’t belong. Others as a result of either Hiro’s mission or his hidden identity as a shinobi or both.

They’re both responsible for their landing in the mess they uncover in Edo. Father Mateo can’t bear to see a man who may be innocent condemned to death without an investigation for a crime that even at the briefest glance appears to have not been his fault. Something reeks about this whole case – and it’s not just the camphor that seems to have started a whole bunch of coincidental fires that are too many and too much alike to be truly coincidental.

Meanwhile, one of the men that Hiro has come to warn is the investigator for the crimes. He is also a man whom Hiro has never trusted after their rivalry in childhood and young adulthood. Hiro is certain something is rotten in Edo and in this investigation – if only because his old enemy is in it up his neck.

Or possibly up to Hiro’s.

Escape Rating B: When Hiro and Father Mateo arrive at their comfortable inn in Edo, at first it seems as if they will finally get a bit of a rest. Or at least not have to face the metaphorical ghosts they did in the previous book in this series, Ghost of the Bamboo Road.

This time around, the ghost that Hiro has to face is entirely too real. The man that Hiro has come to Edo to warn, Daisuke, is a ghost of Hiro’s past. When they were both young and being trained in the arts of the shinobi, Daisuki locked Hiro in a small space with a corpse. They were young, they were being entirely too foolish, and the incident left Hiro with no fear of corpses or ghosts whatsoever – unlike the norm for his time and culture.

But it did leave Hiro with a profound distrust of Daisuke – a distrust that continues into adulthood. Father Mateo believes that Hiro should forgive the other man, not for Daisuke’s sake but for his own.

But Hiro can’t shake his distrust – a distrust that grows into suspicion as the three men are caught up in a series of crimes that seem to be intended to either expose the shinobi in Edo or cover up their activities – at the expense of an innocent man’s life if necessary.

That the crimes that this mystery is wrapped around all involve printing and bookbinding shops made the story a bit of a treat for this librarian. On my other hand, the character of the intrusive, ineffective, conclusion-jumping junior police officer grated on my last nerve.

Of course, he’s supposed to. That he managed to fail upward at the end was a bit more annoying – even if all too realistic – than I really wanted to see. (Honestly, I wanted him to turn out to be the criminal. He was so obviously suspicious that it didn’t seem possible but no one stuck out quite the way he did.)

The crimes that are covered and uncovered seemed as if they were tangential to the real business – right up until the end. So I was certainly fooled – but not quite as enthralled as I was with Ghost of the Bamboo Road.

But I adore this series, and can’t wait to see where Hiro and Father Mateo’s wandering journey takes them next!

Review: Ghost of the Bamboo Road by Susan Spann

Review: Ghost of the Bamboo Road by Susan SpannGhost of the Bamboo Road: A Hiro Hattori Novel by Susan Spann
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Shinobi Mystery #7
Pages: 272
Published by Seventh Street Books on November 12, 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

When a vengeful spirit terrorizes a mountain village, a ninja and a Jesuit must save the villagers from the phantom’s wrath.
January 1566: En route to Edo, Master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo spend the night in a rural mountain village whose inhabitants live in terror of a legendary vengeful ghost. When the innkeeper's wife is murdered and Father Mateo’s housekeeper, Ana, is blamed for a crime she did not commit, Hiro and Father Mateo are forced to investigate and reveal the truth. But when another woman turns up murdered in the snow, the detectives must face the shocking truth that the vengeful yurei the villagers fear might be more than just a legend after all.

My Review:

No one wants to think that one of their neighbors is capable of committing murder – or even any lesser crimes. It’s why so many small town and country house mysteries usually start out with everyone involved pointing the finger, not at each other, but at some unknown wandering stranger. We all want our own little closed group to be blameless – it’s too uncomfortable to think otherwise.

But for the blame for not one or two but eventually four recent deaths in an isolated rural village to be attributed to ghosts and not any living humans at all is a bit too much for either shinobi (read ninja) Hiro Hattori and his friend and protectee Father Mateo to credit. The villagers may believe in ghosts, but Hiro has too much practical experience of the world to believe in ghosts. Father Mateo’s faith means that he does not believe in ghosts either – no matter how many times one of the villagers claims that he already is one.

Both Hiro and Father Mateo also have way too much experience in investigating mysterious and uncanny murders that always turn out to have been committed by humans and not any supernatural creatures at all.

Color them both skeptics. Even in the face of seemingly an entire village quivering in fear of an avenging ghost who seems to be systematically eliminating every remaining villager who refused to help her when she was alive.

It’s too easy for the logical Hiro to see that while the deaths may be mysterious, placing the blame on a ghost is a bit too convenient for someone. Or perhaps more than one someone. But the inconvenience of the local samurai refusing to allow them to leave until the crime is solved is all too real – and his blackmail attempt all too transparent.

It’s up to Hiro to suss out the real killer and their real motives – along with discovering who is responsible for a string of thefts that is somehow tied up in the murders – before they can continue on their self-appointed journey to Edo.

Escape Rating A-: I was so tempted to start with a Ghostbusters riff, because neither Hiro nor Mateo are afraid of any ghosts. Making this story an attempt to tell a ghost story with two total non-believers at its center.

The journey that Hiro and Mateo are on, from the disaster at Mount Koya in the previous book in the series, Trial on Mount Koya, is self-appointed or self-inflicted on Hiro’s part. The organization and family that trained him in the hidden arts of the shinobi is under threat from the capital, and Hiro is trying to warn all the covert agents along the way to Edo. Father Mateo is on the run after the events in a previous book in the series, The Ninja’s Daughter.

That being said, this story does stand somewhat alone. Not that knowledge of the previous events in the series isn’t handy or that acquiring that knowledge by starting at the beginning in Claws of the Cat isn’t a great reading time, but it would be possible to pick this up without starting at the beginning as this is set in an isolated part of their longer journey.

However, this series as a whole is an absolute treat for historical mystery and historical fiction readers. At the time the story takes place, Medieval Japan was mostly closed to outsiders. Father Mateo’s presence as guide and audience surrogate provides a window into a time, place and culture that was just opening to outsiders. We have been able to explore and discover along with him, while helping – or sometimes hindering – Hiro’s investigations along the way.

And while watching their relationship, initially curious strangers, bodyguard and protectee, change into friendship verging on brotherhood – with all the affection and exasperation inherent in that kind of family tie.

The case they have to solve here is both fascinating because of its setting and familiar because of the all-too-human motivations that set these crimes into motion. Hiro and Mateo are always outsiders even in places where they are most familiar, but in this tiny village they are more obviously so. It’s clear that much is known but not spoken of, and it’s up to these two strangers to bring those secrets into the light of day.

If only so that they can finally escape the place with their own mission also accomplished and their household intact!

I’ve followed this entire series, and loved every minute of it. But somehow I missed this book when it came out, and didn’t discover it existed until I learned about the upcoming publication of the next book in the series, Fires of Edo, which is due out in mid-February. From the title, it looks like their rather fraught journey to Edo is going to reach its destination, but hopefully not its end.

I’m looking forward to traveling with them again. Soon!