Laura Joh Rowland schrijft meeslepende historische thrillers die duiken in ingewikkelde thema's als identiteit, familie en culturele botsingen. Haar verhalen verkennen vaak de positie van vrouwen binnen patriarchale samenlevingen en brengen het verleden tot leven met meesterlijk geconstrueerde plots en levendige historische details. Rowland's werk dompelt lezers onder in verschillende tijdperken en nodigt uit tot reflectie op universele menselijke ervaringen.
While investigating the murder of a woman whose torso has been found, crime photographer and investigator Sarah Bain Barrett is pitted against a bitter enemy who is hell-bent on discovering what she and her close-knit band of comrades know about the killer, threatening both her marriage and her friendships
In November 1890 London, crime scene photographer Sarah Bain Barrett and her husband, Detective Sergeant Barrett, find themselves in a precarious situation after a train crash leads them to a strangled woman. Their investigation into her identity takes them to Cremorne Gardens, a disreputable riverside amusement park filled with carnival attractions and oddities. This case proves to be one of their most challenging, with suspects including a dwarf, a female acrobat, and even a member of the Royal Family. The police commissioner has deemed the case top-secret due to the royal connection, forcing Sarah and her team—Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly—to work discreetly while evading the press and public scrutiny. Complications arise as Hugh recovers from an injury, Mick navigates a romance with a psychic, and Barrett's past resurfaces with an old flame. Concurrently, Sarah's father, Benjamin Bain, faces trial for a decades-old rape and murder of a teenage girl, Ellen Casey. As the media frenzy escalates, Sarah grapples with her father's claims of innocence. The trial and the investigation into the murder on the train intertwine, revealing dangerous secrets lurking behind Cremorne Gardens' facade. Will the truth about her father and the case lead to shocking revelations?
"London, October 1890. Crime scene photographer Sarah Bain is overjoyed to marry her beloved Detective Sergeant Barrett - but the wedding takes a sinister turn when the body of a stabbing victim is discovered in the crypt of the church. Not every newlywed couple begins their marriage with a murder investigation, but Sarah and Barrett, along with their friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly, take the case. The dead man is Charles Firth, whose profession is "spirit photography" - photographing the ghosts of the deceased. When Sarah develops the photographs he took in the church, she discovers one with a pale, blurred figure attacking the victim. The city's spiritualist community believes the church is haunted and the figure is a ghost. But Sarah is a skeptic, and she and her friends soon learn that the victim had plenty of enemies in the human world - including a scientist who studies supernatural phenomena, his psychic daughter, and an heiress on a campaign to debunk spiritualism and expose fraudulent mediums. In the tunnels beneath a demolished jail, a ghost-hunting expedition ends with a new murder, and new suspects. While Sarah searches for the truth about both crimes, she travels a dark, twisted path into her own family's sordid history. Her long lost father is the prime suspect in a cold-case murder, and her reunion with him proves that even the most determined skeptic can be haunted by ghosts from the past. "--Publisher's description
"Investigating a brutal murder attempt on a woman in 1890 London, crime-scene photographer Sarah Bain and her friends are baffled when three different families claim the victim, who awakens without a memory of her identity." --Publisher
Riveting and richly imagined, with a magnificent sense of time and place, The Iris Fan is the triumphant conclusion to Laura Joh Rowland's brilliant series of thrillers set in feudal Japan. Japan, 1709. The shogun is old and ailing. Amid the ever-treacherous intrigue in the court, Sano Ichiro has been demoted from chamberlain to a lowly patrol guard. His relationship with his wife Reiko is in tatters, and a bizarre new alliance between his two enemies Yanagisawa and Lord Ienobu has left him puzzled and wary. Sano's onetime friend Hirata is a reluctant conspirator in a plot against the ruling regime. Yet, Sano's dedication to the Way of the Warrior—the samurai code of honor—is undiminished. Then a harrowing, almost inconceivable crime takes place. In his own palace, the shogun is stabbed with a fan made of painted silk with sharp-pointed iron ribs. Sano is restored to the rank of chief investigator to find the culprit. This is the most significant, and most dangerous, investigation of his career. If the shogun's heir is displeased, he will have Sano and his family put to death without waiting for the shogun's permission, then worry about the consequences later. And Sano has enemies of his own, as well as unexpected allies. As the previously unimaginable death of the shogun seems ever more possible, Sano finds himself at the center of warring forces that threaten not only his own family but Japan itself.
In the wake of a terrifying earthquake, Sano Ichir No races to solve a crime that could bring down the shogun's regimeJapan, 1703. A devastating earthquake has left the city of Edo in shambles - even the shogun's carefully regulated court is teetering on the brink of chaos. This is no time for a murder investigation.
When the shogun is forced to claim an illegitimate son as his heir after the death of his only child, Sano Ichirō, believing the malevolent youth to be part of a plot to seize power, risks the safety and honor of his family to uncover the truth.
The Ronin's Mistress is a brilliant new twist on the fabled tale of the 47 Ronin, from Laura Joh Rowland--an author with "a painter's eye for the minutiae of court life [and] a politician's ear for intrigue." (The New York Times) Japan, 1703. On a snowy night, 47 warriors murder the man at the center of the scandal that turned them from samurai into masterless ronin two years before. Clearly this was an act of revenge--but why did they wait so long? And is there any reason they should not immediately be ordered to commit ritual suicide? Sano Ichiro, demoted from Chamberlain to his old post as Most Honorable Investigator of Events, Situations, and People, has mere days to solve the greatest mystery of samurai legend--while his own fortunes hang in the balance.
In the aftermath of a woman's brutal attack in 1701 Japan, samurai detective turned chamberlain Sano Ichiro suspects the true motives of a formerly exiled rival who has been oddly cooperative, a situation that is further complicated by a relative's disappearance
