Red Chrysanthemum

Red Chrysanthemum

type

Book

Current Status

In Season

author

Laura Joh Rowland

publisher

St. Martin's Minotaur

genre

Fiction

We gave it a B+

In her 11th book about samurai Sano Ichiro — now second-in-command to the shogun in 1698 Japan — Laura Joh Rowland sets the stakes high. Sano’s beset on all sides by sworn enemies (and allies); his loyal deputy seems alarmingly distracted; he’s accused of mounting a coup — all while investigating the murder of a local lord, whose castrated body was found next to a naked, pregnant woman: Sano’s wife. Blending political intrigue and barbed sexual commentary, Rowland builds Red Chrysanthemum‘s pulpy setup into a crisply lurid Rashomon mystery that makes up in page-turnability what it lacks in surprise.