No-No Boy

 

By John Okada

Ichiro was just a kid when he and his family were confined in one of the relocation centers for the Japanese in America during World War II. When he turned eighteen, he was told to enlist in the military. He refused and as a result he spent several years in prison.

Released at twenty-five and back home, Ichiro is finding it very difficult to reintegrate into society. The fact that he refused to serve in the military is an albatross around his neck. Those Japanese men who had served looked down on those who refused, the No-No Boys. But his mother is very proud that her son did not fight in a war against the homeland. Those who did are traitors, she believes. Ichiro soon finds out that his mother and some other Japanese families in the area believe that Japan actually won the war and that those saying otherwise are merely spouting Western propaganda. Ichiro also discovers that his father knows the truth and deals with the strain it has put on the marriage by staying drunk all the time. 

Ichiro wants to find a job but when possible employers find out he was in prison for refusing to fight for America, they won't give him work. Ichiro encounters an old friend from school, Kenji. Kenji fought in the war and lost his leg in it. But Kenji doesn't judge Ichiro for being a no-no boy. He gives him his friendship and accepts him without judgment. Kenji's friendship and Kenji's health struggle helps Ichiro put his own problems in perspective. 

This was quite an interesting story, about the effects of the war and of the relocation on the Japanese population of America. It's not a subject that I have ever paid much attention too, beyond acknowledging that it was unjust and cruel and stupid. 

Dance Hall of the Dead

 

By Tony Hillerman

A young Zuñi boy, Ernesto, is missing and his last known location drenched in blood. His best friend, a Navajo boy, George, has also gone missing, the morning after Ernesto disappeared. 

Normally, the Zuñi police would handle the investigation. But because George is not a Zuñi, Joe Leaphorn, a Navajo policeman, is called in, tasked with one thing: find George Bowlegs.

So Joe starts nosing around, following George's trail which leads him to Zuñi Village where Ernesto disappeared. And to George's home, where Joe finds the boy's father who is too drunk to be of any help. But he finds George's younger brother who is able to enlighten Joe about what George was up to in the days leading up to Ernesto's disappearance. Ernesto is soon found in a shallow grave and now young George is a suspect in his friend's death. Joe continues tracing George's movements and his contacts which included a hippy encampment and also an archaeological dig site. 

The hippies saw George the morning after Ernesto was killed and indicate that George had set out on horseback on a journey but they didn't know where. And Joe's questions at the dig site revealed that the two boys were frequent visitors there until the leader of the dig ran them off, claiming they were contaminating the dig site. 

But none of this leads Joe to a killer or a reason why a young boy was so brutally murdered. There is more to the story and an important part of it may be George's fascination with the Zuñi religion. Joe had seen a man dressed as a Zuñi kachina lurking around and the younger brother had indicated that George had also claimed to have seen and been frightened by a man dressed as a kachina. 

Did Ernesto die because he broke some rule about the Zuñi religion? Was that kachina-disguised person hunting down George for the same reason? Or did the two boys somehow cross the drug smugglers associated with the hippie camp? It soon becomes clear to Joe that someone is hunting young George and if Joe doesn't find the boy first, George will meet his death.

This was a very readable and engrossing story even though the murderer was pretty clear long before the end of the story. And the ending brings up the problem I had with the book: I hated the ending. To go all the way through a story to have it end the way it did was very disappointing. 

A Darker Domain

 

By Val McDermid

A rich man's daughter and her baby son are kidnapped and held for ransom. Contact is made with the kidnappers and an exchange arranged. But it all goes wrong and the daughter is killed and the kidnappers vanish with the baby and are never heard from again.

Twenty years later, and a woman has come to the police for help finding her father who vanished at about the same time as the rich man's kidnapped grandson. The woman is desperate to find her father because her son is dying of cancer and needs a transplant and her father could be the donor, if he can be found.

All her life, she thought her father, Mick, was a miner who left his family behind and moved away to a nearby town, sending back money occasionally. But as the police investigate his disappearance, they discover he never moved to that town and the money was being sent by someone else who felt sorry for her mother.

Meanwhile, the rich man still longs to find his lost grandson and bring him home. . A reporter has stumbled across a compelling new piece of evidence concerning the kidnappers. She brings this evidence to the rich man and he brings it to the police and now the search is on once again to find the lost baby who is a baby no longer and is now a young man. If he is even still alive!

This was an OK mystery story. It was pretty clear that the vanished miner and the kidnapping, which both happened at about the same time and in about the same area, were most likely connected. One thing I found hard to understand was the miner's wife just accepting that he had moved to a nearby town without ever following up on that and seeing for herself that he had left her and his family behind. Supposedly she was ashamed because he a "scab" or, as he is called in the story, a "blackleg" or, if I am understanding it correctly, a "strikebreaker." I must admit that the book made so little impression on me, that when I sat down to write this, I couldn't even remember what it was about until I looked at the description on the back cover. I didn't dislike it, I also didn't love it, it was an OK read.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Ghost Month

By Ed Lin

Jing-nan and Julia first met in grade school and fell in love and planned out their lives together. They would go to college in the USA and then get married and raise their children and live lives of success and prosperity. At least that was the plan. 

But Jing-nan's father died unexpectedly and a large family debt was passed on to Jing-nan requiring him to return home to Taiwan and run his family's food stand in the night market in Taipei. 

Jing-nan was ashamed of his failure to graduate college and having take over the food shop. So he broke off contact with Julia. Last he heard, she had dropped out of college and had also returned to Taipei. Then he found out Julia had been working in a betel nut shop where the shop girls dressed provocatively to lure in their mostly male customers. And that she had been murdered, shot dead. He is stricken with grief and can't help but wonder how such a lovely, smart girl had ended up like that. 

He begins a sort of half-hearted investigation that reveals the local gangs might have been involved. Gangs are rampant there (apparently) and somehow Julia came to grief because of her knowledge of their activities. Jing-nan is on the right track, as he is beaten up and threatened by local gangsters. But the threats don't stop him and his questions don't only lead to Julia's killers but to understanding his own feelings and failings too.

This was an interesting and sad story. The loss of a bright young woman like Julia was just so tragic. As was Jing-nan's acceptance of the burden of his family's debt, forced into spending his life paying it off. But the best thing about the story was looking at a culture that shares much with ours but is also quite different, with a very long and complicated history. I liked reading about Jing-nan, his friends and coworkers and I enjoyed the story very much. 

Kirkus has a review of the novel here: Kirkus Reviews. 

Murder Must Adverise

 

By Dorothy L. Sayers

Something is fishy at the advertising firm of Pym's. A man has died at the office and it isn't clear that it was an accident. So the boss brings in Lord Peter Wimsey to work undercover as a copywriter.  As an employee of the advertising agency, it will be the first time Lord Peter has ever held a real job and earned a working man's paycheck, an experience that touches him in unexpected ways.

Doesn't take long for Lord Peter to figure out that Mr. Pym, the owner of the agency, was correct in his feeling that things are not right. Getting to know the his various coworkers and seeing their struggle of making ends meet puts Lord Peter deep into a lifestyle opposite to his own of wealth and privilege. And it is that scramble for money that has lead someone at the agency down a very sad and dangerous road.

This is one of my favorite Sayers stories, mainly for the way Lord Peter makes himself adapts to working at the advertising agency. He becomes so involved with his copywriting that walking away from it when the case is solved became a bit difficult for him. I enjoyed the look behind the scenes at the agency and I imagine the thinking that goes into their ad campaigns isn't all that different than advertising thought today, ninety years later.