The Salaryman's Wife

New York, NY: HarperPaperbacks, 1997. Reprint. Second printing. Mass-market paperback. Good. Signed by author. Cover has wear and soiling. Rear cover corner creased and front cover has small curve at top. Signed on title page. Stamp on page before t-p.. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. [8], 424 p. Cast of characters. Rei Shimura is a 27-year-old English teacher living in one of Tokyo's seediest neighborhoods. She doesn't make much money, but she wouldn't go back home to California even if she had a free ticket. Her independence is shaken, however, when a getaway to an ancient castle town is marred by the murder of the beautiful wife of a high-powered businessman. Rei suspects the police aren't looking in the right places, so she does. And she manages to piece together a strange, ever-changing puzzle--one that is built on lies and held together by years of sex and deception. From WIkipedia: "Sujata Massey is a mystery writer born 1964 in Sussex, England who emigrated with her family to the United States at the age of 5. She attended Johns Hopkins University graduating in 1986 and worked on the Baltimore Evening Sun. [1] She is best known for her series featuring Rei Shimura, a Californian born to a Japanese father and an American mother. Many of her novels are set in Japan and in Washington, D.C. On her official Website, Massey states that she has begun work on a new Rei Shimura book set in post-tsunami Japan entitled The Kizuna Coast. She is also writing a new historical suspense series called The Daughters of Bengal. The first book in the series is The Sleeping Dictionary and is set in British India between 1930 and 1947. In this novel, a ten year old peasant girl, Pom, orphaned by a cyclone, undertakes an odyssey through colonial Bengal in order to survive. With literacy skills, social intelligence and charm, she moves from servitude at a girls' boarding school in Midnapore to a pleasure house in Kharagpur, eventually reaching Calcutta where she becomes involved in the Indian freedom movement during World War II. Other novels in the Daughters of Bengal historical fiction series will feature Pom's descendants in newly independent India."