In this installment of the series Sano gets married to the feisty Reiko who wants to help him with his criminal investigations. Before the wedding celebrations can begin, the body of the shogun's favorite concubine, Harume, is found dead. The shogun decides that he needs Sano to begin investigating this death ASAP. The honeymoon is abruptly cancelled as Sano and his assistant Hirata begin their work to determine how the concubine died.
I was surprised at the amount of sex in this book. Prior books in the series did not have any sex. This one had explicit descriptions of sexual encounters, including kinky sex and gay sex. Every character was described having sex. Even the concubine's tattoo is in a sensitive area. You don't expect that in historical fiction.
Aside from that, the author presented a colorful picture of life in the women's quarters at Edo Castle. It was noisy, vengeful, had rich appointments and extravagant kimonos but the women were kept behind screens so that they would not be seen by men. My impression was that they were prisoners. I don't know if that is what the author intended but wealth never makes up for freedom.
Sano wanted a compliant wife but Reiko was raised to be independent and refused to sleep with him until he relented in making her a work partner. I didn't see this as plausible. It just wasn't Sano's character to be anything but a traditional samurai. In prior books he never had thoughts about treating women differently than society dictated. It didn't fit his character to suddenly jump into being a women's rights samurai.
The investigation and resolution of the murder was outstanding. There were plenty of suspects and red herrings. However, as I write this review I cannot escape my overall impression that I just read a romance novel, not a historical fiction story. It's romance in feudal Japan. When I bought this book I expected to read the 20+ novels in this series. Now I am not so sure. I like history, not romance.
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