Product Description

Matsuyama Kaze is a "ronin," a Japanese knight errant. Kaze must travel across Japan until he fulfills a promise made to his dying Lord and Lady -- to find their nine-year-old daughter. As this masterless samurai searches the countryside, he is caught up in a series of mysteries that test his strength and skills as well as his Confucian training.

Kaze stumbles upon a corpse shot with an arrow at the crossroads leading to a small town. He becomes embroiled with an unlikely -- and untrustworthy -- cast of characters, who are as colorful as they are crafty. Each has secrets to keep and axes to grind, and it will take all of Kaze's subtlety, stealth, and Samurai skills to unravel the mystery and unmask the killer.

Richly atmospheric, filled with historically accurate detail, Death at the Crossroads evokes the world of long-ago Japan and the often lonely life of an honor-bound warrior. It's a spellbinding, deeply satisfying mystery that will leave readers hungry for the next chapter in Matsuyama Kaze's journey of adventure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #859007 in Books
• Published on: 1998-07-08
• Released on: 1998-06-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
The face of remarkable actor Toshiro Mifune might insist on looming up before your eyes as you read this engrossing new historical mystery about a rogue samurai warrior named Matsuyama Kaze ("Pine Mountain Wind" ) roaming through rural Japan in 1603--the year that began the long, oppressive reign of the Tokugawa Shogunate. In the first book of a planned trilogy, Dale Furutani first introduces us to Kaze in a scene straight from the Gregory Peck movie "The Gunfighter," as the wily, middle-aged samurai outwits a young challenger. Then, on the road to the country village of Suzaka, Kaze and a local charcoal seller find the body of a stranger, pierced by an arrow. The local lords are quick to pin the crime on a bandit chief, Boss Kuemon, but Kaze's investigation points to a less obvious killer. Telling his subtle, strong story, Furutani conjures up compelling images: "As he walked along the path, Kaze looked at the splashes of blue sky peeking through the woven branches of the trees. It was a constantly changing mosaic that recalled the intricately painted patterns on the expensive Satsuma porcelains he knew from his youth." Furutani's two modern mysteries, Death in Little Tokyo (which won an Anthony for best first novel) and The Toyotomi Blades, are available in paperback. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly
The Anthony and Macavity Award-winning author of Death in Little Tokyo (1996) and The Toyotomi Blades (1997) moves back in time with his third mystery, a quietly reflective historical puzzler set in early-17th-century Japan. Matsuyama Kaze is a ronin?an unaffiliated, wandering samurai?whose personal history is gradually revealed as he investigates the murder of an unidentified man whose corpse is left near a remote mountain village. Interrupting his mission to find the missing daughter of his Lord and Lady, whose deaths came in the revolt that led to the oppressive centuries-long rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Matsuyama gradually weaves himself into the fabric of daily life in the region. He exercises his samurai skills in martial arts, in cultivated patience and in cunning intelligence through which he understands the obvious and hidden links among the local peasants, the petty village officials, its Lord and the band of local outlaws whose power has recently increased. Furutani surely and gradually creates an atmospheric setting in this increasingly compelling story, casting in the hero's role a figure who manages to embody with utter credibility both compassion and ruthlessness. This is the first tale in a projected trilogy, and readers will look forward to the second installment.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Its 1603. As samurai warrior Matsuyama Kaze, bereft of his lord, wanders Japan's Yamato District, he comes upon a sight distressingly common in these days of civil war: a stranger felled by an arrow at a crossroads where one path leads to the village of Suzaka. This this isn't any ordinary corpse, though, as a brief fencing match between Kaze and District Magistrate Nagato Takamasu reveals. The victim has been killed elsewhere and carried to the crossroad, and not by the obvious suspect, bandit chief Boss Kuemon, either. While Nagato's boss, Yamato District Lord Manase, is eager to crucify Jiro, the charcoal seller who came upon the body just before Kaze did, he graciously allows Kaze a few days to investigate: ``It's all the same to me which villager is killed for this murder. It might as well be the one who actually did it.'' So Kaze, a good man with a sword and a wily enough samurai to know when he doesn't need it, goes to work with all the reflectiveness of Adam Dalgliesh, producing a body count worthy of Mike Hammer. Only when most of the cast is dead does he finger a killer most readers, even if they lack Kazes Bushido skills, will have identified long since. Though Furutani doesn't inhabit the period as deeply as Laura Joh Rowland doesthere's a particularly jarring Abbott and Costello routine on the way to examine the first bodythis opening entry in a samurai trilogy is much more solid work than the authors two modern-dress mysteries (The Toyotomi Blades, 1997, etc.). -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A beautifully written novel of great literary merit.
Matsuyama Kaze (family name first, then given name) is a middle-aged Samurai, (age 31 was considered middle-aged, 50 ancient) in 17th century Japan. He is a Ronin--which is to say he is without a master, and is wandering in search of employment--although in this story, his wandering is in the nature of a quest, which he has undertaken at the dying request of The Lady--the widow of Kaze's former Lord. He is searching for the Lord and Lady's daughter who was abducted after the Lord was defeated in a great battle.

These are chaotic times in Japan. Hideyoshi, the Taiko, has died of old age in his bed, and Ieyasu Tokugawa, who had been patiently waiting for his time to come, has defeated those loyal to Hideyoshi's heir and is now the undisputed ruler of Japan. Numerous samurai who had been loyal to the losing side are wandering like Kaze, looking for employment with some Lord before they lose their status as samurai, which means, "those who serve."

On his journey, Kaze happens upon a dead man lying at a crossroads with a distinctive arrow in his back. Kaze takes on the investigation of the crime, which leads him into fairly constant danger.

This is a wonderful novel. I would classify it, if I had to classify it, as a mainstream novel with a strong mystery at its heart. In my opinion it is a work of great literary merit.

"Around him, mist clung tenaciously to the jagged folds that formed the ravines and valleys of the mountains. Through the low-lying white haze, the ragged black pines and reddish cryptomeria poked through the white curtain, looking like some enigmatic calligraphy of the gods, a message written with the slashing brush strokes of trunks and branches on a shifting silver paper."

The lyrical quality of the writing meshes perfectly with the ambience of 17th century Japan. I lived in Japan for a couple of years and all I saw then, plus all I have read about the history of Japan, the plays I've seen, the novels and articles I've read, lead me to believe th! is is an exact historical rendering of the time. Not only that, it is done in a way that makes it accessible to all readers. In other words, it's a damn good story.

Kaze, the main character, is beautifully drawn. As a samurai, he uses violence when necessary, but not unthinkingly, only when driven to it and never without compassion. He has a great sense of humor, superb intelligence and a wonderfully devious mind that he employs in forming strategy with which to beat his enemies. He is also possessed of great charm. Here he is describing himself to Jiro the charcoal seller. "I no longer have a home. I'm a ronin, a 'wave man.' Like the waves of the ocean, I call no land home. Like water on rocks, I can't mix in and settle, I am always pulled back to flow to the next shore."

There is a fairly large cast of very colorful characters, including Jiro, the charcoal seller, Hachiro, a scared boy, Aoi a prostitute, Manase, the district Lord who is also a skilled Noh dancer; and a marvelous elderly woman who wears a white head band that has the kanji character for "revenge"painted on it. She also wears hakama pants and a traveling coat just like a man. "Stuck into her sash were a man's swords and she strode into the room with all the power and arrogance of any real samurai." All of the characters are meticulously drawn and memorable.

Death at the Crossroads is the first of a Trilogy. I'm already impatient to read Kaze's next adventure.

Brilliantly conceived Historical mystery...
Writing with the longtime eloquence of an established prose-writer, Dale Furutani paints a sweeping, grandiose picture of Japan in the beginning of an oppressive (somewhat backward and yet modernistic) era-The Tokugawa Shogunate- in 1603.The hero of the novel, a ronin (a samurai sans a master), stumbles across a corpse on a misty mountain pass. In the course of his adventure, Kaze (the ronin), discovers a remarkable collection of characters that Dame Agatha Christie herself would be hard to match. The cast ranges from Aoi, the luckless prostitute, to the ultra-refined Lord Manase (who insists on living life as in Heian period Japan, a period six HUNDRED years ago! ), to the greedy and ambitious Lord Nagato. We also meet the humble Jiro and the somewhat noble Hachiro and Ichiro, while facing the aggravating, and shortlived Boss Kuemon.A captivating yarn, with a little too much blood for the elegant story, nonetheless fails to disappoint. Get a copy today!I can hardly wait for the next two books in the trilogy.

Wonderfull New Historical Mystery Series - Yay!
This is a new series for Furutani. It features ronin Matsuyama Kaze, a freelance samurai, in 1603 Japan. Kaze is on a quest to find the child of his former master. He is following one small lead after another with dwindling hope of finding the child he has been looking for during the proceeding two years. On his way to his next destination, he comes across a charcoal gatherer who is examining the dead body of a merchant. In spite of himself, Kaze stays around to see what happens and finds himself embroiled in the small town's politics and rivalries as he attempts to unravel the mystery of who killed the merchant and why.

Furutani's writing is lyrical and the reader finds himself enveloped in a cadence that transports the reader to medieval Japan. Like all first books in series, this one must not only develop the character's personality, but provide us with a mystery and a story as well. The latter is no mean feat in and of itself, but Furutani accomplishes the task with ease. Furutani does not set flaunt his research by using every bit of minutiae he picked up, but, rather, he uses it subtly to advance his story and, in the process, educate his readers. For those who, like myself, do not care for Furutani's previous books, be rest assured that the writing here as well as the characters are a very welcome change. The uniqueness of the setting adds to quality of this book.