Marshall Browne, Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn

Rendezvous at Kamakura Inn

Marshall Browne

Dunne, Nov 2005, $23.95, 288 pp.

ISBN: 0312311583

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Inspector Hideo Aoki and his squad have worked for almost a year and half of double shifts to gather evidence to prove criminal wrong doing of former Governor Yukio "Fatman" Tamaki. As they close in on the Fatman, the Director General informs Hideo the case is closed because the ex-public official is now considered above the law. To Hideo, the Fatman wielded some of his major political and monetary influences to force the cops to back down.

Making matters even worse for Hideo is that the brass sends him into exile as befitting a failure. He travels to the remote Kamakura Inn to investigate in what is assumed a nonentity murder. Instead Hideo soon finds ties to the notorious Fatman, even as other killings occur, which he knows if he surfaces before he has airtight proof against the Fatman, he will be yanked again, and further humiliated with an even more remote exile.

The key to this wonderful Japanese police procedural is the stubborn Aoki, who in spite of being run out of town in a fall from grace manner, continues to do his best; he refuses to allow the abusive treatment of him stop him from doing his job, even before he connects the dots back to the Fatman case. While the fast-paced storyline provides an insightful look at Japanese society mostly through the eyes of Aoki, RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN is owned by the beleaguered hero.

Harriet Klausner