Books in series
#1
The Salaryman's Wife
1997
Japanese-American Rei Shimura is a 27-year-old English teacher living in one of Tokyo's seediest neighborhoods. She doesn't make much money, but she wouldn't go back home to California even if she had a free ticket (which, thanks to her parents, she does.) Her independence is threatened however, when a getaway to an ancient castle town is marred by murder.
Rei is the first to find the beautiful wife of a high-powered businessman, dead in the snow. Taking charge, as usual, Rei searches for clues by crashing a funeral, posing as a bar-girl, and somehow ending up pursued by police and paparazzi alike. In the meantime, she manages to piece together a strange, ever-changing puzzle—one that is built on lies and held together by years of sex and deception.
#2
Zen Attitude
1998
It's Tough to Keep Cool When the Heat Is On
Japanese-American Rei Shimura finally has a life to be proud of in Tokyo: running her own antiques business and living with her Scottish lawyer boyfreind. But when Rei overpays for a beautiful chest of drawers, she's in for the worst deal of her life. The con man who sold her the Tansu is found dead, and like it or not Rei's opened a pandora's box of mystery, theft, and murder.
Only Rei sees the Tansu as the key. It will take a quick wit, fast feet, and above all a Zen Attitude for Rei to discover what a young monk, a judo star, and an ancient scroll have in common, and why her own life hangs in the balance.
#3
The Flower Master
1999
Family secrets come to haunt half-American, half-Japanese Rei Shimura, a Tokyo antiques dealer, when she attempts to reveal the murderer of her instructor in ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging. By the author of Zen Attitude. Tour.
#4
The Floating Girl
2000
Rei Shimura is a Japanese-American antiques dealer who, looking to supplement her income, has begun writing a column for the Gaijin Times, Tokyo's English-language newspaper. When the paper's owner decides to transform the publication from a conventional news outlet to a comic book magazine, Shimura gets what is, for her, an unwanted assignment—to write an article on the history and culture of manga. Shimura discovers Mars Girl, a manga that follows the adventures of a superhero, and the Showa Story, in which the superhero travels back in time, to 1930s Japan. Determined to keep her job at the newspaper, Shimura pursues Mars Girl's creator, Kunio Takahashi, in both the hip and the less-than-savory sides of Tokyo.
#5
The Bride's Kimono
2001
Antiques dealer Rei Shimura has managed to snag one of the most lucrative and prestigious jobs of her career: a renowned museum in Washington, D.C., has invited her to exhibit her kimonos and give a lecture on them. Accompanied by a gaggle of Japanese office ladies bent on a week of shopping, Rei lands in the capital. But her big break could ultimately break her. Within hours one of the kimonos is stolen, and then Rei's passport is discovered in a shopping mall dumpster—on the dead body of one of the Japanese tourists. Trouble is only beginning, though, for now Rei's parents have arrived and so has her ex-boyfriend. To track down the kimono and unmask a killer, Rei's got to do some clever juggling, fast talking, and quick sleuthing, or this trip home could be her last.
#6
The Samurai's Daughter
2003
A new crime–thriller full of suspense from Sujata Massey, the acclaimed author of The Bride's Kimono and The Floating Girl.
Antiques dealer Rei Shimura is in San Francisco visiting her parents and researching a personal project tracing the story of 100 years of Japanese decorative arts through her own family's experience. Her work is interrupted by the arrival of her boyfriend, lawyer Hugh Glendinning, who is involved in a class action lawsuit on behalf of aged Asian nationals forced to engage in slave labour for Japanese companies during World War II.
These two projects suddenly intertwine when one of Hugh's clients is murdered and Rei begins to uncover unsavoury facts about her own family's actions during the war. Rei unravels the truth, finds the killer, and at the same time learns about family ties and loyalty and the universal desire to avoid blame.
#7
The Pearl Diver
2004
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.
#8
The Typhoon Lover
2005
A young woman with a foothold in two cultures, Rei Shimura has gone wherever fortune and her unruly passions have led her throughout her chaotic twenties. Now, after the streamers for her thirtieth birthday celebration have been taken down, the Japanese-American antiques dealer and part-time sleuth finds herself with an assignment to find and authenticate an ancient Middle Eastern pitcher that disappeared from Iraq's national museum.
The piece is believed to be in the hands of a wealthy Japanese collector, whose passion for beauty extends to Rei herself. But when a devastating typhoon hits Tokyo, Rei is trapped with the object of her investigation—and with much much more than the fate of an ancient pitcher at risk.
#9
Girl in a Box
2006
"It's taken me almost a whole lifetime to become a decent liar."
Award-winning author Sujata Massey is back with a delicious blend of mystery and contemporary women's fiction, and in Girl in a Box, Japanese-American sleuth Rei Shimura is on her most dangerous outing yet.
Chronically underemployed Rei takes a freelance gig with a Washington, D.C., alphabet agency that just might have ties to the CIA. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, is to go undercover as a clerk in a big Tokyo department store. It's a tricky and risky assignment, but it also gives Rei the opportunity to check out all the latest fashions and use her store discount to indulge her shopping impulses.
Meanwhile, she's listening in on conversations not meant for her and crashing a conference she's not invited to. She winds up fending off the advances of a couple of the store's executives who seem to be fascinated by her navel ring. When her cover is blown, Rei is in big trouble, and it will take all her resourcefulness and unorthodox methods to unmask a killer.
#10
Shimura Trouble
2008
During a family reunion on the island of Oahu, Japanese-American undercover spy Rei Shimura is roped into helping the Hawaiian branch of her family regain land stolen from them during World War II. But when fire sweeps the island and her young cousin is accused of arson, Rei, with the assistance of both her boyfriend and ex-lover, must discover the truth, which turns out to be linked to the Shimura family history . . .
#11
The Kizuna Coast
2014
When an earthquake triggers a tsunami that floods Japan's northeast coast, amateur sleuth Rei Shimura is pushed into her most rugged adventure yet.
It starts with an SOS from Rei's beloved elderly friend, the antiques dealer Mr. Ishida, who's trapped among thousands on the ravaged Tohoku coast. Rei rushes from Hawaii to blacked-out Tokyo, where she discovers Ishida Antiques may have been burglarized and its cuddly watchdog, Hachiko, needs a caregiver.
Rei and Hachiko board a bus full of disaster volunteers headed to the damaged town of Sugihama. Once there, they learn about the disappearance during the tsunami of Mr. Ishida's antiques apprentice, Mayumi, a troubled young woman from a famous lacquer-making family.
Making use of her volunteer friends, as well as her knowledge of Japanese manners and antiques, Rei investigates Mayumi's suspicious disappearance. Complicating the situation is a police force overwhelmed by counting the dead, and a stalker who's set his or her own sights on Rei.
#13
Junior High Samurai Short Story
A Rei Shimura Short
2011
In this short story, Rei Shimura searches for a missing boy in suburban Japan.
#16
The Deepest Blue
2011
Rei Shimura travels to a remote Japanese island to buy indigo but unveils a disturbing mystery.
Author
Sujata Massey
Author · 21 books
Sujata Massey is the author of historical and mystery fiction set in Asia. She is best known for the Perveen Mistry series published in the United States by Soho Press and in India by Penguin Random House India. In June, 2021, THE BOMBAY PRINCE, third book in the series, releases in the US/Canada and Australia/New Zealand; it will be published by Penguin India later the same month. THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL, the first Perveen novel, was named a Best Mystery/Thriller of 2018 and also an Amazon Best Mystery/Thriller of 2018. Additionally, the book won the Bruce Alexander Best Historical Mystery Award, the Agatha Award for Best Historical Mystery and the Mary Higgins Clark Award, all in 2019. The second Perveen novel, THE SATAPUR MOONSTONE, won the Bruce Alexander Best Historical Mystery Award in 2020. Sujata's other works include THE SLEEPING DICTIONARY (2013) and eleven Rei Shimura mysteries published from 1997-2014. For more about Sujata's books and a full events schedule, subscribe to her newsletter, http://sujatamassey.com/newsletter Sujata lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her family and two dogs. In addition to writing, she loves to travel, read, cook, garden and walk.
