A day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, I fired off an e-mail message to New Orleans-based mystery author Laura Joh Rowland -- who just weeks before had kindly sent me an inscribed copy of her latest novel for review -- and was relieved to hear from her a day later. She was safely camping out with relatives up north and in good spirits.
She also promised me that her next novel would include a storm of similar magnitude. ("But Sano and Edo come out of it much better than New Orleans will," she predicted.)
"The Assassin's Touch" is the 10th in Rowland's series featuring samurai sleuth Sano Ichiro, who has moved up the ladder from plodding cop on the beat to chief investigator, and now chamberlain to the Shogun.