Tokyo Girl by Brian Harvey

This second Frank Ryan mystery from Brian Harvey follows Beethoven's Tenth, which I encourage you to read first. Tokyo Girl stands alone, but you will get much more out of this story of crime and danger.

Frank Ryan teaches piano to Tokyo housewives eager to learn Debussy and Beethoven. Akiko, one of his younger clients, lives in a large, stylish home and often sports a black eye or bruises. She introduces an older man as her father, and although he disapproves of the gaijin, he offers Frank a gig at his jazz lounge in the upscale Kichijoji area—for little pay but big tips.

It is just weeks after the earthquake and tsunami that washed out Fukushima, and a volunteer group called the Fukushima Fifty has been sent in to clean the area up.

Every Wednesday, Frank sees a beautiful woman on the train and finally gets the courage to ask her to the jazz club. When Momo visits, she immediately asks Frank a favor; she believes his boss, Mr. Goto, is the mob boss who killed her missing brother. He was homeless in Tokyo and was rounded up with other men by the Yakuza and sent to Fukushima as a cleaner against his will. A list of names in Mr. Goto's briefcase would prove it.

As he gets more involved with Momo and further away from the bruised Akiko, he delves deeper into the dark mystery of who each person really is. Deception is the game, and it's easy to become a pawn when you don't know the rules.

This dynamite mystery is better than the first. The pace, the intrigue, the characters.

Highly recommended.

Once again, Harvey packs a lot of story into this Tokyo mystery, where foreigners reside on the surface. Even if Frank understood the language, he would never be allowed in. This ends with a bang-up finale in the dark of the closed Tsukiji seafood market and a few twists that had me sit up and exclaim out loud! Always the sign of good writing. Totally satisfying.

2016 / Tradeback / 144 pages

My other Brian Harvey review:

Beethoven's Tenth (Frank Ryan #1)