Snakeskin Shamisen
From Summer of the Big Bachi to Gasa-Gasa Girl, Naomi Hirahara’s acclaimed novels have featured one of mystery fiction’s most unique heroes: Mas Arai, a curmudgeonly L.A. gardener, Hiroshima survivor, and inveterate gambler.
Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win–from a novelty slot machine!–he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly raised when the winner, a friend of Mas’s pal G. I. Hasuike, is found stabbed to death just days later. The last thing Mas wants to do is stick his nose in someone else’s business, but at G.I.’s prodding he reluctantly agrees to follow the trail of a battered snakeskin shamisen (a traditional Okinawan musical instrument)…
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April 25, 2006Naomi Hirahara is the Edgar® Award-winning author of the Officer Ellie Rush Mysteries, including Grave on Grand Avenue and Murder on Bamboo Lane (which received the T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award). Born and raised in Pasadena, Naomi received her bachelor’s degree in international relations from Stanford University and studied at the Inter-University Center for Advanced Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. She worked as a reporter and editor of The Rafu Shimpo in downtown Los Angeles. She is also the author of the Mas Arai Mysteries (including Summer of the Big Bachi, Gasa-Gasa Girl, and Snakeskin Shamisen) and the middle-grade novel 1001 Cranes, and has written, edited, and published several nonfiction books, largely about the Japanese American experience. She lives with…