Naomi Hirahara's third Japantown mystery, Crown City, delivers an incisive primer about integrating Japanese culture with American ways through the experiences of a teenager in 1903.
Following the death of his master craftsman father, 18-year-old Ryunosuke "Ryui" Wada leaves Yokohama, Japan, for the "Crown City" of Pasadena, Calif., where he has secured a carpentry apprenticeship with an art dealer. Ryui's initial response to the U.S. is lukewarm: most people cannot pronounce his name, so they call him Louie. He lives in a rundown boarding house, where he shares a room with surly Jack, a Japanese photographer who frequently disappears, seldom talks to Ryui when he's there, and has commandeered their bathroom as a darkroom. Ryui takes a side gig as a server at a prestigious cherry blossom dinner hosted by popular artist Toshio Aoki. During the event, though, one of Aoki's paintings disappears. Aoki approaches Ryui and Jack to find it, hoping their proximity to the art world, their heritage, and unassuming roles uniquely position them to investigate while avoiding negative publicity. But to do so, the amateur detectives must navigate a seedy area called "Dark California," an opium den, murders, and anti-Japanese bigotry.
Hirahara (Clark and Division) captures an era when Japanese art was popular in Pasadena, yet racism toward Japanese people persisted. At first Ryui is hesitant to sleuth, believing he has enough to do at his job and in assimilating, but he eventually views helping Aoki as another way to prove himself in his new home. Ryui finds much to appreciate in the U.S. as he settles into his adopted country in the satisfying Crown City. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer