The Samurai's Daughter (The Rei Shimura Series, 6)

Rei Shimura is a character that I feel strongly drawn to. She's just an awesome representation of my niche in my generation. That being said, being drawn to a main character isn't enough to make a great book. However, Massey, as usual, delivers both a likeable/identifiable character and a darn good mystery. In this installment Rei is back home in San Francisco and this time she is learning more about her family and her once again boyfriend, the delicious Hugh Glendinning. Of course, knowledge for Rei always leads to painful chaos and "The Samurai's Daughter" isn't any different. This is another great addition to a series that always creates a concrete and fascinating local and an interesting mystery all while progressing the main character(s).

Unlike other reviewers, I enjoyed Rei's experience of returning to America after living so long in Japan. We see Japan through her Americanized eyes and then we see San Francisco filtered through her Japanese experience. I agree with other reviewers: This series is best read from beginning to end. But if you've been following Rei Shimura and have come to care about the heroine, this volume offers background into the heroine's life and how she has been formed into a unique individual -- someone who grew up in the US but lives comfortably in Japan.The plot was a little far-fetched and there is some reliance on coincidence. Most readers will smell a rat as soon as they meet the character who turns out to be the villain, although the connection won't seem at all obvious. However, I didn't mind and didn't question the plot or the motive until I put the book down, after a long and satisfying read. And Rei's alliance with Hugh should lead to more adventures. As others have noted, the author is ather best when she's writing about Japan. However, beginning with The Bride's Kimono, I suspect the author wants to write more about the US. And I'll look forward to the next volume in the series, no matter where it takes place.

I just finished this latest addition to Sujata Massey's Rei Shimura mystery series. I thought it rivaled her other novels, and even bettered a few of them. A change of setting was a new twist Massey gave the reader in this book, splitting Rei's time between her hometown of San Francisco, and her beloved, adopted home in Tokyo. I thought this split helped character development - the reader got to know Rei and her background even more than in previous novels. Her love life has finally stablized with on-again, off-again beau, Scottish man Hugh Glendinning. While Rei is visiting her parents in SF, she is working on a family history document. Hugh is a central character as he navigates his way through a class action lawsuit against former WWII slave laborers. As her involment in both projects grow, Rei comes to understand her own roots even more fully.If you've never read one of Massey's books before, this will be a treat (and go grab the others, too!). If you are looking for guns, violence, and hard language, look elsewhere. Massey's lack of these things makes her novels a haven for me! If you have enjoyed her novels before, this one, I believe, will not be a disappointment.

This latest in the delightful Rei Shimura series finds our intrepid Japanese-American once again up to her delicate neck in mystery and mayhem--with a bit of intrigue and a lot of love interest thrown in.Stuck with her parents in their San Francisco homestead, Rei is in turn pleased to be spoiled, and chafing under the bit to get back to her privacy in Japan. But she has a strange house guest, a native Japanese student, to contend with--as well as the ardent courtship of her long-time boyfriend, the sexy Scots lawyer Hugh Glendinning.While contending with the usual East-West contradictions of her everyday life, Rei is contenting herself with researching and writing her family's history. But she uncovers more than she bargained for when it turns out that her grandfather actually tutored Emperor Hirohito--and may have been part of a right-wing Japanese political group that fostered the ultimate events of World War II. Now Rei has to face the Japan of the War, and contrast it with the modern-day Japan, her much-beloved adopted country--and the country of her father.Add to that the top-secret case that Hugh is working on, which concerns reparations for Japanese war crimes, and one gets an idea of Rei's state of mind. For the first time, she becomes distant from her father and her family as she searches her soul for who she really is.The answer is there, and always has been, for the enchanted reader to see--and when Rei ultimately finds herself, there is a wonderful treat in store for her and for us.

On the whole, Rei Shimura should be walking on air right now. Rei and her the love of her life, lawyer Hugh Glendinning, have finally worked past all their issues and differences, and it looks as if their relationship is (finally) progressing along the right lines (Hugh's even been given a posting by his firm to work in Japan for a while). True, Rei's father seems a little less overjoyed by all this. Especially when it comes to light that Hugh has become involved in a class action suit on behalf of those who had been forced into slave labour for Japanese companies during World War II. Rei herself is torn between wanting to see justice done and being terribly afraid at what secret wounds would be reopened if this case ever came to trial. Rei is also desperately afraid that Hugh may be in over his head, a feeling that grows once she meets the other lawyers involved in the case. And when one of Hugh's clients is murdered and another war victim is savagely beaten, Rei realises that she will have to do some hard investigating of her own in order to discover who is trying to keep the survivors silent as well as protect Hugh's interests...The Rei Shimura mysteries have always been a favourite of mine. They're clever, absorbing and really well done. I especially enjoy the little bits of information that Sujata Massey peppers the book with on the Japanese culture, manners and history. And after sighing with relief at the end of the previous Rei Shimura installment ("The Bride's Kimono") where Rei and Hugh finally reunited, I was glad that things didn't fall apart for them in this installment. Though I am a little saddened to discover that Rei and Hugh will be living in the US for a while. One of the joys about this series is that it is set in Japan. Sujata Massey has to send Rei and Hugh back to Japan soon! But to get back to "The Samurai's Daughter," I found it to be a truly engrossing and intriguing read. I read it in one go -- it was so very, very readable. And while some aspects were easy to guess, other aspects of the mystery kept me guessing for quite a while. Poignant, suspenseful and humourous in turns, "The Samurai's Daughter" is a read not to be missed.