The Pearl Diver: A Novel (Rei Shimura Mysteries Book 7)

The seventh book in Sujata Massey's Agatha and Macavity Award–winning mystery series is a witty, suspenseful story that takes its young sleuth into the Washington DC restaurant world. A dazzling engagement ring and the promise of a fresh start bring antiques dealer and sometime sleuth Rei Shimura to Washington, DC. But just as she's starting to settle down –catching up with a long–lost cousin and undertaking a lucrative commission furnishing a trendy Japanese restaurant nearby – things begin to go haywire. First, her cousin vanishes from the restaurant's opening–night party, and then Rei is drafted to help find a Japanese war bride who disappeared 30 years earlier. The search for both missing women becomes suspiciously linked, and along the way, Rei faces truths about herself that may change her destiny – if she lives long enough. The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio Sujata Masseya gracefully weaves Japanese art, history and social mores into a series narrated by a Japanese-American antiques dealer named Rei Shimura, whose efforts to define her identity involve close examination of her bicultural heritage. In The Pearl Diver , her assignment to furnish a new Japanese restaurant in Washington yields wonderful detail about Asian cuisines and the multicultural kitchen workers who prepare them. The narrative dovetails nicely with a moving subplot about a war bride who in her native Japan had been an ama-san, a female shellfish diver, until both stories are swamped by blow-by-blow updates on the heroine's personal life and a smelly red herring about Washington politics. There are still lessons to be learned from the uncluttered and serene lines of Japanese art. A dazzling engagement ring and the promise of a fresh start in a new country bring antiques dealer and sometime-sleuth Rei Shimura to Washington, D.C. But while she tries to play catch-up with her beautiful, politically connected cousin, Kendall, and is commissioned to furnish a chic Japanese-fusion restaurant, things start to go haywire. First, Kendall vanishes from the restaurant's opening-night party, and then Rei is drafted to help Andrea, the restaurant's elegant, cagey hostess, investigate the disappearance of her own Japanese mother thirty years earlier. As the strands of these puzzles begin to come together, Rei finds that her relationship with her fiancé, Hugh, has changed from sizzle to burn. At the same time, she faces troubling questions about what it means to be a loving mother - and whether her own independent streak will endanger the women to whom she has grown close