Laura Joh Rowland is an American
detective/mystery author best known for her series of
historical mystery novels featuring protagonist Sano Ichirō (佐野 一郎) set in
feudal Japan, mostly in
Edo during the late 17th century. She is also the author of two other historical mystery series, one featuring a fictionalized
Charlotte Brontë, as well an ongoing series set in
Victorian England around the time of the
Jack the Ripper murders.
The novels deal with the experiences of Sano Ichirō, a
samurai and minor official who, by the end of the first novel, became the trusted chief investigator for the fifth
Tokugawashōgun,
Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, and by the tenth novel, was promoted to a very high office.
Throughout the stories, Sano constantly had to deal with his problems following the code of
bushido while serving both justice and his master, the Shogun; and with his wife, Ueda Reiko (上田 麗子), who frequently involves herself in Sano's investigations. Sano experiences great pressure as he is faced with death if he does not fulfill his obligations to the shōgun as well.
Rowland takes some
literary license with known figures, creating fictionalized versions of Tokugawa Tsunayoshi,
Emperor Higashiyama in The Samurai's Wife, and
Yanagisawa Yoshiyasu. Objective historical details, however, are credibly accurate.
It is not known if it is intentional that the protagonist's name Sano Ichirō could be interpreted as a homage to one of Japan's most famous deductive fiction writers, Murayama Ichirō (丸山 一郎), born in 1928, who uses the
pen-name of Sano Yo (
佐野洋).
The title of the first novel is the Romanized form of the term written in
kanji as 心中, pronounced as
Shinjū, which refers to a
suicide pact by a pair of lovers.
The title of the second novel is the Romanized form of the term written in
katakana as ブンドリ (bu-n-do-ri), which means "seizing the soil of the vanquished", or simply
spoils of war or
war trophy.[2]