I. J. Parker

Still grieving the death of his small son, Akitada risks career, freedom, and family to rescue an abused child from a life of misery. The search for the boy's family leads to a harrowing story of love, murder, and abandonment. Meanwhile, his faithful servant Tora loses his new wife to a powerful man who pursues beautiful women and will stop at nothing to posses them. The trails of both cases lead to the prostitutes and courtesans of the amusement...

If ever Akitada needed luck, it is now! Things are not going well for him. His new boss is out to get him, his daughter is in love with the wrong man, his ex-wife's affairs come again to haunt him, and he fears he is too old and too poor to deal with any of it. Then his old friend dies suddenly from a case of indigestion that looks suspiciously like murder and the problems escalate into the deadly violence of two ruthless killers. He has to save not...

On the eve of the Tanabata Festival, a warrior rides into a family gathering to slaughter the members of a high-ranking family and their guests. Akitada, whose best friend is among the victims, searches for a shadowy killer who may be part of a secret conspiracy against the emperor himself. In his determination, he defies orders, involves his friends and his sister, and puts his family in danger. Meanwhile, his faithful retainer Tora risks life and...

On a journey to Naniwa to unmask officials who are selling information to pirates, Akitada witnesses the recovery of a body from the river. The image of the drowned child prostitute follows him as his own problems and disasters multiply. Someone is sabotaging his investigation. His young clerk disappears, Akitada is attacked by thugs, and armed men brutalize his family in the capital. When Tora joins his master in Naniwa, they both fall into the...

After the loss of his wife and newborn son, Akitada returns home, ostensibly to care for his motherless children, but really to withdraw from the world into his grief. When his friends and family join in an effort to draw him out of his seclusion by tempting him with a mystery, he responds halfheartedly until he becomes intrigued by the young woman's alleged suicide and the slipshod way in which the police investigated. But more serious problems arise:...