cover image The Exile Way: A Mystery of Ancient Japan

The Exile Way: A Mystery of Ancient Japan

Ann Woodward. Avon Books, $5.5 (212pp) ISBN 978-0-380-78497-4

Set in medieval Japan, this lushly detailed mystery by a literate Westerner captures exotic details in a court of ""abundant pleasures"" where concubines are persecuted by jealous women and the Ministers of the Right and Left engage in convoluted power plays. The learned heroine, Lady Aoi, is depicted early as ""a lone woman, entering at dusk"" to help ease the suffering of the near-blind emperor with her medicinal crystals. The scroll giving instructions for the remedy is stolen during one of many fires that ravage the royal residence and eventually destroy another lady-in-waiting. Aoi survives banishment and brutal captors, no mean feats in this arcane but engaging mystery with some smartly (and appropriately) feminist overtones. (Nov.)