Resumo de Red Chrysanthemum - Laura Joh Rowland

This is the eleventh novel in Rowland?s series starring Sano
Ichiro, the samurai detective, set in Japan in the 1690s. For most of the book,
there is a freshness that has been missing from the series for a long time.

Rowland?s plot borrows from Rashomon, with a violent
crime, a mystery about how it was committed, and contradictory flashbacks. Sano?s
deputy, Hirata, and his team investigate a rumor that Lord Mori is involved
with a plot to overthrow the ruling regime. When they enter his estate, they
find Lord Mori stabbed and mutilated in his bed, and Sano?s wife, Reiko, lying next
to him. How did this come to happen? In the early part of the book, three
answers are provided, in three flashback chapters. One of them is Reiko?s point
of view: she says she went undercover to investigate reports that Lord Mori
molested and killed young boys. Unfortunately for her, the evidence doesn?t
seem to support her story, and if she is found guilty, she will be executed. In
the second flashback, Lady Mori says that Reiko was Lord Mori?s mistress and
that she killed him when he tried to end the relationship. The third flashback
is more novel: it is the viewpoint of Lord Mori himself, revealed through a
medium, claiming that his murder was part of Sano?s plot to overthrow the
shogun. (All three are told in the third person.)

The novels in this series are vivid and detailed. The first four books, especially, were very
fresh and original. The next few books were still fresh, although not as much. After
seven or eight books, they felt more formulaic and repetitive, although still
full of vivid detail. The recurring protagonists were still likeable, sympathetic
and heroic, but they weren?t doing much that was new any more. The recurring
villains were still sinister, but their intrigues-behind-court-walls, their
machinations, were getting repetitive?alliances between power-hungry politicians
and retainers forming and breaking up, once or twice a retainer from a previous
book being executed. But it was feeling sort of tired.

Rowland has tried to add freshness to her books by making
certain changes in the series by changing the circumstances of her main
characters. Spoilers of previous books in the series follow: Two books
earlier, Hirata was stabbed in the leg in the course of duty, and never fully
recovered, resulting in reduced mobility, making him a less effective retainer
and samurai. And Sano was promoted from sosakan-sama (the shogun?s chief
detective) to the shogun?s second-in-command, with Hirata becoming chief
detective. And in The Assassin?s Touch, the book before red
Chrysanthemum, a reclusive mystical martial arts master finally agreed to
accept Hirata as a pupil. (When a writer decides to put an ongoing story arc in
a mystery series, sometimes it moves very slowly.) In The Assassin?s Touch,
Sano?s new position didn?t change things much; Sano had some new anxieties,
took more precautions; he had Hirata do secret things for him, instead of doing
them himself, because he was being watched more by his enemies than previously;
and the dialogue of those in court plotting against him was slightly different.
But most of the plot, most of Sano?s behavior, could have happened the same way
when he had his old job. In Red Chrysanthemum, the series feels more
different; the change in his job has penetrated into Sano?s thoughts and
perceptions, into the atmosphere of the story, in a way that it didn?t in The
Assassin?s Touch. And in Assassin?s Touch, Hirata, though lame
and trying to persuade a martial arts master to take him as apprentice, was
otherwise doing all the same things he used to, but in Red Chrysanthemum
Hirata actually is a novice supernatural warrior, which makes what he does and
what happens to him different.

Freshness is also brought to the ruthless, back-stabbing Chamberlain
Yanagisawa, who first appeared in the second or third book. As he connived, and
sometimes murdered, his way through the previous books (often trying to get
Sano executed, sometimes making a truce), his level of power rose and fell, but
he remained wealthy, free and powerful. But recently before this book, he was
exiled to imprisonment on a small, remote island. The chapter in Red Chrysanthemum,
titled ?The Exile?s Tale,? was my favorite in the book. It takes place a few
months before the main events of the book, and in it, we see what Yanagisawa
does, not as a high-profile lord and politician, but as a low-profile criminal,
advancing his power while avoiding being noticed. It shows how dramatically
satisfying reversals of fortune can be in fiction. (Incidentally, he was a real
figure, but his exile didn?t happen in real life, according to Wikipedia.)

The later part of the book has less newness?the solution to
the mystery, and the actions Sano and company take to solve it, are more familiar
from the previous books in the series. But in the context of all that is newer
about this book, it is still enjoyable.

So, I would still recommend this book to fans of historical
mysteries and historical adventure stories.

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