Thurstan Beauchamp, who narrates this tale, is a young Christian, the son of a Norman knight and a Saxon mother, who moved to Italy in 1125. When his father joins a monastery, leaving Thurstan landless and without the opportunity to become a knight, Thurstan accepts work in the Diwan of Control, the central financial office at the palace. His patron is Yusuf Ibn Mansur, a politically savvy and honest official, who teaches Thurstan the protocol which will enable him, eventually, to become an influential employee of the king, if he can only avoid the pitfalls of the numerous factions and their plots. Since Thurstan is also “Purveyor of Pleasures and Shows,” responsible for finding entertainments for the king and the court, he travels throughout Europe, and it is in this role that he finds and hires a group of five Middle Eastern performers, including Nesrin, a belly dancer extraordinaire, to come to Palermo to perform for the king.
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Akitada Sugiwara, a minor official of the emperor’s Justice Ministry, investigates crimes and mysteries so different from what the reader expects that they will keep even the most jaded mystery fan fascinated. A member of the nobility in 11th century Japan, Akitada and his family have lost their prestige and are no longer influential in the emperor’s court. He is only a low-level junior clerk, a position he achieved because he placed first in his university examinations, not because of family background. In this third novel in the series, Akitada is sent on special assignment to investigate the disappearance of three yearly tax shipments from Kazusa province, a task he accepts enthusiastically since he thinks it a great honor, and, not incidentally, because it will allow him to travel outside Heian Kyo (Kyoto) for the first time.
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In the dramatic opening of this novel, a woman and an unconscious man wait in the darkness of a monastery cell for the woman’s lover, who arrives bearing the body of a another young woman. Annoyed when her lover shows signs of weakness and has qualms about beheading the corpse, slashing the face, and wiping the blood on the unconscious man, the woman begins the gory process herself. As in any good mystery, the reader quickly becomes caught up in the action–the reasons for the murder, along with the identities of the dead woman, the bloodthirsty female participant in the murder plot, and her compliant lover. Clever deduction, additional gory murders, serious threats to the life of the investigator, and single-minded dedication to unmasking the murderers, while combatting in-fighting and professional jealousies among his peers, make this an exciting addition to the traditional murder mystery genre. In truth, however, only the structure of this novel is traditional. The murder actually takes place in eleventh century Japan, and the detective is Lord Akitada Sugawara.
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