#booknews #protips #friends #reviews #suggest
This is Mystery Ahead, the
newsletter for readers and writers. Together, we find out what makes for a compelling mystery.
Remember to share! Friends love mysteries, too. #booknews HAT DANCE joins CLIFF DIVER in audiobook format! Find the second book in the Detective Emilia Cruz series on Audible.com via audio publisher
Tantor Media. Once again, award-winning voice talent Johanna Parker is the narrator.
PS: Remember to leave a review!
#protips A good mystery has two drumbeats: plot twists and mounting tension.
Here are three classic ways to make both pound loudly: 1. Every character wants something and can’t have it. 2. The environment they’re in is flawed or faltering under pressure. 3. Conflict between characters is rooted in their personal relationship or competing interests.
#friends This month I’m thrilled to host Susan Spann, author of the Hiro
Hattori mystery series. Even if you don't like sushi, you'll be riveted by this series set in medieval Japan.
An attorney as well as a mystery author, Susan was the 2015 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Writer of the Year and is a former president of the Northern California chapter of
Mystery Writers of America, and a member of Sisters in Crime, the Historical Novel Society, and the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Association. She is represented by Sandra Bond of Bond Literary Agency.
1. Carmen Amato: Susan, thanks so much for stopping by. I found your mystery series books via Twitter and was immediately struck by their uniqueness. Two terrific key characters: master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo
investigate crime in 1560’s Japan. Tell us how you came to write the Hiro Hattori series.
Susan Spann: Thank you so much for inviting me, and I’m delighted that you enjoyed the books! I fell in love with Japanese history and culture after reading James Clavell’s SHOGUN back
in the 1980s—enough to major in Asian Studies at Tufts University during my college years—but the idea for the Hiro Hattori novels didn’t come to me until many years later. While getting ready for work one morning in 2012, I had the random thought: “Most ninjas commit murders, but Hiro Hattori solves them,” and knew immediately that I had to tell that story.
2. CA: Hiro Hattori is a “master ninja” but certainly not a caricature. What was your inspiration and how did you craft him as a multi-dimensional character?
SS: Real
ninjas—shinobi in Japanese—were masters of espionage as well as highly trained assassins. I’ve always felt the Hollywood portrayals (though entertaining) didn’t do them justice, and I wanted to make sure my ninja detective was closer to the real thing. I wanted Hiro to feel real—in his weaknesses as well as his strengths—and I did a lot of research to ensure I was portraying ninjas accurately while still creating a page-turning mystery adventure.
3. CA: Hiro Hattori’s sidekick is a Portuguese Jesuit priest. You have really departed from the norm here. Tell us how you came to match up these two unique characters.
SS: When creating the Hiro Hattori series, I needed a “cultural translator” to make the intriguing facets of Japanese culture and history more accessible to readers, most of whom wouldn’t know much about ninjas or samurai Japan. Since Jesuits came to Japan in the 16th century, which also happens to be the height of real ninja activity in Japan, pairing my ninja with a Jesuit priest seemed like a perfect
solution.
Originally, I intended Father Mateo to serve as a “Watson” – more of a sidekick than a real partner in crime (solving). As it worked out, the characters felt differently, and I have to admit I’m glad. I love the dimension Hiro and Father Mateo’s relationship gives to the
books.
Read the rest of the interview here: http://carmenamato.net/mystery-author-susan-spann/#reviews CLAWS OF THE CAT is one of those books you wish you’d written, but grudgingly know you’d never come up with the premise.
Author Susan Spann takes us to imperial Japan in
1565. The Jesuits, in the form of Portuguese priest Father Mateo, have a toehold in Kyoto, from which he has the approval of the regional shogun, or warlord, to conduct missionary work. A shinobi, a covert agent trained in stealth—read ninja—has been assigned to protect him. Hiro Hattori, from the distant city of Iga, is the shinobi. Hiro’s point of view, and
whispered backstory, guides us through this exciting journey. The cracks in feudal Japan are beginning to show, yet society is still delicately balanced with rigid rules and norms.
A teahouse "entertainer" girl, Sayuri, who has converted to Christianity, is found with a dead client. Father Mateo comes to see what he can do for this member of his nascent flock. Although
Sayuri was found with blood on her kimono, she insists she woke to find the client’s throat slashed and the room bloody. The dead man’s enraged son, a local policeman, is entitled by law to execute his father’s killer. He gives Father Mateo two days to prove the girl is not the killer and find the real one; if the priest cannot the son will kill both the girl and the priest.
Hiro is bound to by oath to protect the priest. In only 48 hours, he must find a brutal killer, a task made even more difficult by his lack of authority, the uncooperative attitude of the teahouse owner, and the societal conventions which rule conversations, even those about murder.
All of Hiro’s training and resources are put to use. He and Father Mateo, both engaging characters who have achieved understanding and friendship in the two years they have been thrown together, play off each other as they question those who might have something to do with the murder.
Clues lead in all directions. Why did the teahouse owner
secretly burns her ledgers? Why did the dead man’s daughter, a female samurai, inherit everything instead of her brother, as would be normal? Why did the dead man seek to become Sayuri’s “patron” at the teahouse, i.e. take her as his mistress, when his brother wanted to buy her contract from the teahouse and marry her? What did the dead man’s death have to do with a rice merchant who visited the teahouse and also sought to buy guns from a Portuguese trader?
The misleading clues mount up, yet Hiro leads us through the maze as only a ninja can. He knows that “a shinobi’s first and greatest defense is misdirection” and that it works both ways. Spann effortlessly brings us into Hiro’s world of both violence and grace where katana swords and ritual burial armor coexist with the intricate art of flower arranging. The details
reflect rigorous research, down to the measure of a room based on the number of tatami mats and the cadence of the characters’ speech. You can almost smell the cherry blossoms.
The ending of CLAWS OF THE CAT is razor sharp. Hiro is able to pick out the anomalies and solve the case. Justice is meted out, Japanese-style. Just enough of Hiro’s backstory is there, too, like breadcrumbs along the path, to entice the reader on to more of this absorbing, authentic, and superbly written series.
#suggest I recently blogged about the purpose of sex scenes in serious fiction: “To advance the plot, show
emotional development, and dramatize a relationship with greater heft than a dinner date. It works best when the sex scene lives within a strong fictional framework and storyline.”
Among others, reader Becky A. responded and consented for her comment to be used here: “I think you should include sex scenes if they show how the characters relate to each other in them,
if they show the character of the character in the give and take of sex. The sex scenes in your books are good. They are revealing and frank without being clinical. Keep writing them!”
What do you think about sex scenes in fiction?
That's all for this edition of Mystery Ahead!
Until
next time, keep reading and keep exploring the mystery ahead :)
All the best, Carmen
PS: Read PACIFIC REAPER, the latest Detective Emiia Cruz mystery? Don't forget to leave a review!
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