Tracking down the past

See another review of Country of Origin by William Wetherall.

Don Lee
Country of Origin
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004
318 pages, hardcover

Although set in 1980, Country of Origin seems to have borrowed a cue from a recent true crime -- the case of former British Airways stewardess Lucie Blackman, who was fatally drugged in July 2000 while dating a customer of the Roppongi club where she worked.

Multiple characters . . .

After beginning on a similarly violent note, author Lee weaves together several parallel stories involving the murder victim, an Asian-American named Lisa Countryman; Tom Hurley, the U.S. embassy official assigned to her case; and Kenzo Ota, the bumbling Japanese cop who liaises with the embassy in the search for the missing woman.

Each major character sustains his own sub-story. Hurley, in the midst of a tepid affair with the wife of a CIA officer, is involved in a hit-and-run accident; Ota, a skittish insomniac who is treated with contempt by his police colleagues, coincidentally discovers his ex-wife had gone to the United States, remarried and returned to Tokyo with a pudgy, obnoxious son who Ota is convinced must be his own.

. . . none appealing

Lee, who describes himself as "third-generation Korean American," manages to splice on some material about the lowly status of Koreans in Japan that seems unrelated to the plot. Until the story finally gets sorted out, it lacks a single character with any appealing qualities.

The victim herself -- who came to Japan in search of a mother she never knew -- is unable to form lasting friendships, and those searching for her prove, by turns, to be self-serving, duplicitous, corrupt, manipulative and generally unappealing.

The late novelist Ross Thomas (1926-1995) had a penchant for creating agreeable rogues, one that Lee would do well to emulate. The lack of a likable protagonist is the most serious flaw in this otherwise well written and carefully researched book.

Sujata Massey
The Pearl Diver
New York: HarperCollins, 2004
335 pages, hardcover

Two books back, Sujata Massey's amateur sleuth, Japanese-American antique expert Rei Shimura, had been deported from Japan for getting underfoot while a crime was under investigation. Now engaged to her lawyer beau Hugh and settled in Washington, D.C., she's landed an order to decorate a new Japanese restaurant.

Murder or suicide?

Andrea, the restaurant's serving hostess, turns out to be the daughter of a black U.S. serviceman and a Japanese woman who disappeared from their home in Virginia shortly after Andrea was born. Did her mother, unable to adjust to life in the U.S., commit suicide? Or was she murdered, perhaps so that her father could remarry?

Shimura, enlisted in the search for Andrea's mother, seems to be closing in when she suddenly finds herself whisked away in the trunk of an abductor's car. Even after this close call she refuses to halt her investigation, which leads her to her estrangement from Hugh.

Kinder, gentler crimes

The exploits of Massey's feisty female character are supported by good research -- particularly the interesting insights into the dog-eat-dog world of Washington politicians and the restaurants they frequent.

On the other hand her books tend to feature kinder, gentler crimes that make them more appealing to female readers. Massey's character's deportation from Japan and move to D.C. is analogous to her own departure from Japan several years ago.

Thus for both the writer and her character, the ties to Japan seem to be fading farther from view with each successive work. If her series is to be prolonged, a refresher visit may be in order.