Shinju

Seventeenth-century Tokyo is the setting for Rowland's first book in a murder mystery series featuring Sano Ichiro the Senior Police Commander in the district of Edo. Ichiro is a samurai whose academic background puts him at odds with most of his peers. When beautiful, wealthy Yukiko and low-born artist Noriyoshi are found drowned together in what seems to be a shinju, or ritual double suicide, everyone believes the cause was their forbidden love.

Everyone, that is, but Sano Ichiro. Despite the official verdict and being warned off by his superiors, the shogun_s Most Honourable Investigator of Events, Situations and People suspects this double death was not only a tragedy _ it was murder. Risking his family_s good name and his own life, Sano will search for the killer across every level of society, determined to find answers to a mystery no one else seems to want solved . . .