Trial on Mount Koya

May 7, 2018
Spann cleverly riffs on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None in her sixth novel set in 16th-century Japan (after 2017’s Betrayal at Iga). Hiro Hattori, a ninja assassin “hired by an unknown benefactor” to guard a Portuguese Catholic priest, journeys with his charge, Fr. Mateo Ávila de Santos, to the remote Buddhist temple of Myo-in at the summit of Mount Koya to deliver an important message to Ringa, a spy for Hiro’s clan, the Iga. Ringa winds up murdered, his body posed such that it appears he was wearing a crown of flame and was clutching a sword in one hand and a rope in the other. The setup is intended to make the dead man resemble the god Fudo Myo-o. More residents of Myo-in die in bizarre ways before Hiro and Mateo uncover the surprising truth behind the killings. Spann has never been better at balancing mystery with the politics of the era, and this improvement signals a brighter future for the series. Agent: Sandra Bond, Bond Literary Agency.

May 1, 2018
Who's killing the Buddhist monks at a sacred mountain temple?Ninja samurai Hiro Hattori and Father Mateo, the Portuguese priest he's sworn to protect with his life, have journeyed in November 1565 to a Shingon temple high on Mount K?ya to deliver a warning. Hiro, who's posing as Mateo's translator, has a message for Ringa, a priest who's also a spy for the Iga clan, to which Hiro belongs. Hiro and Father Mateo have escaped an attack on the Iga ryu, where Hiro's longtime love was killed, filling him with rage and a thirst for revenge. Ringa has been charged with warning other Iga agents who stand in danger, but the first night Hiro and Father Mateo are at the temple, Ringa is murdered and his body posed as the Buddhist deity Fud? My?-?. Because the mountain is cut off from the world by a violent snowstorm, Hiro and Father Mateo (Betrayal at Iga, 2017, etc.) know that the murderer must be one of the priests or Soro, another visitor who's arrived with a child. When Anan is the next to die, Hiro wonders whether someone plans to kill more priests and pose them all as the Kings of Hell, Buddhist judges of the afterlife. As Father Mateo becomes increasingly fascinated by what he's learning about Buddhism and the priests question him about his own religion, tension mounts. The monks, who are all hiding secrets, would like to believe the killer is Soro, who Hiro thinks is lying about who he is. But would he bring along a child on such a murderous errand? As more deaths follow, Hiro becomes ever more certain that Father Mateo is also marked for death.Spann's homage to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None combines a puzzling mystery with a fascinating look at historical Buddhism.

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May 1, 2018
In the latest Shinobi mystery set in feudal Japan, master ninja Hiro Hattori, along with Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo, whom Hattori has sworn to protect, and the ninja's pet cat travel to a Buddhist monastery, just as a snowstorm hits, to deliver a message to a spy disguised as one of the priests. When the blizzard descends upon the enclosed sanctuary and its 13 occupants, someone kills the guardian priest, posing him as one of the Buddhist judges who rule the afterlife. When another murder occurs just moments after the first, Hattori and Father Mateo set out to capture the assailant before all the monastery's inhabitants meet the same grisly fate. Spann (Betrayal at Iga, 2017) writes with careful attention to dialogue and setting. Though the interactions feel contemporary, each scene is set like a paneled Japanese painting from the era. Fans of this series, and of similar series set in medieval Japan by Laura Joh Rowland and I. J. Parker, will appreciate Spann's clever homage to the locked-room mystery.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)