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The first mystery of Sosakan-sama, Ichiro Sano under the regime of Shogun Tunayoshi.
Publishers Weekly starred review says, "Well-developed characters, absorbing plot, and rich detail."
I agree about the characters : detective couple, Ichiro and Reiko Sano and dark pretty heroine Haru and a heal monk Anraku. I agree about the absorbing plot.
But I disagree about the rich detail. The detail of this mystery is poor and ridiculous. For example, this is the biggest and irreparable mistake; Mrs. Rowland doesn't know there was no open trial in the Edo era.
The Shogun Tsunayoshi was the rare shogun of dictatorship. He made a fresh post, in fiction, "Sosakan-sam" who should be ordered only by Shogun and had a police authority over the nation but Shogun. In real the police authority of Edo government was divided into four department. The first one is a big-police for the lord families(大名）。The second is a small-police for the soldiers(=bureaucracy ) of Tokugawa government. The third is a religious-police. And fourth is a citizen-police for common citizen. In this fiction, there is a same system of police. And a sosakan-sama could transcend these four polices. Therefore all of the chiefs of four polices dislike Sosakan-sam Sano.
One night one of the police chi eves, who is the biggest rival of Sano, was found dead in the arson fire in the Black Lotus Temple. They find another two bodies, burned body of a woman and a young child. The suspect was easily found. Haru was found unconscious beside the fire site.
The Shogun Tsunayoshi ordered Sano to investigate the case. Sano thinks Haru is a native liar and a bad habit of arson. But his wife Reiko believe Haru's words to doubt the brotherhood of Black Lotus and the leader of Black Lotus, Anraku.
With the story progressing, the couple turned into deeper conflict almost to divorce. Their word battle is boredom.
At last Sano admitted the preparation of religious terrorism of the brotherhood. Sano and two hundred soldiers run into the temple where the thousands of armed believers were waiting....
The battle scene is very poor and has poor reality but exciting like as comic book.
I can't have a brave to recommend this mystery to Japanese.
