EPICANTHUS

It’s been nearly four years since Pasadena mystery writer Naomi Hirahara penned her last novel, and the promise of another great adventure into the cosmology of the nearly extinct Japanese America alongside her ornery but lovable Nisei gardener-turned-crime solver Mas Arai has fans of the genre taking note across the land.

Critics have recognized that Hirahara’s Mas Arai franchise is more than pulp fiction. It’s closer to oral history and, thus, is both a lovingly limned literary homage to the Japanese American community and a cultural anthropology rolled into one.

In Blood Hina, Hirahara, a journalist who six years ago introduced her grumpy San Gabriel Valley-based hero Arai and rocked the mystery genre with her debut effort, The Summer of the Big Bachi, has the Pasadena gardener Arai reluctantly agreeing to serve as his best friend Haruo Mukai’s best man. But inside, Arai, a widower himself, scoffs at his friend’s romantic folly.

“Why was Haruo, at seventy-one, even thinking of getting remarried? Might as well just buy two cemetery plots next to each other.”

The night before the wedding, however, two old “hina dolls,” empress dolls, used to celebrate the Hina Matsuri Festival of Girls’ Day, vanish from the bride-to-be Spoon Hayakawa’s house, and her daughter Dee, who has been in treatment for drug addiction, accuses Haruo of stealing them. The wedding is called off, and Mas soon discovers that Haruo has been seen regularly at Santa Anita Racetrack.

The reviews have been great.

“Blood Hina is even better than Hirahara’s Edgar Award-winning Snakeskin Shamisen.”
—Denise Hamilton, author of the Eve Diamond series

Enough said. I’m sold. Book signing have been scheduled.

Bravo, Naomi-chan!

• Blood Hina, Amazon (Mary Whipple’s review)
• Mas Arai Mysteries Flackistry
• Local Naomi Hirahara Book Signings