The Way of the Traitor

Samurai Sano Ichiro, our guide through the intricacies of life and death in 17th-century Japan in Laura Joh Rowland's evocative and accessible mysteries  is called the Shogun's Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People. All of these skills--plus a strong sense of survival--are needed in this story about what happens when Dutch traders arrive in Nagasaki in 1690. The foreigners are isolated in a small section of the city, and most ordinary citizens are forbidden to make contact with them--on penalty of beheading.