Andrew Rosenheim introduced FBI agent Jimmy Nessheim in Fear Itself, a smart thriller with a 1930s milieu. For the sequel, The Little Tokyo Informant, Nessheim's in Los Angeles, and Rosenheim clearly enjoys dipping into the hot, sweaty, noir-ish atmosphere of Chandler and Hammett's Southern California.
The story takes place from September 1941 to March 1942, in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Nessheim has been assigned by J. Edgar Hoover to advise a film studio on FBI tactics for a "B" film called The Red Herring: "Make sure the studio makes the Bureau look good," he's told.
Along the way, Nessheim finds out about $50,000 wired by Soviet intelligence officers in New York to a Japanese bank in Los Angeles. He wants to talk with Billy Osaka, a small-time Japanese-American journalist who's been recruited to do some translating and help identify subversives who might be working for Japanese intelligence--but he's missing. He does find Billy's grandmother--only she's been murdered. Meanwhile, an assistant director at the Bureau, working leads in Washington, finds a dead State Department official. It looks like he was involved in the money transfer. Why?
Rosenheim deftly juggles all the pieces of a mystery set in a world on the cusp of war in a thriller that could point to nefarious goings on at the highest levels of the government. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher