Remember Tokyo: A Foreign Affairs Mystery

Wilkshire’s appealing third Foreign Affairs mystery (after 2017’s The Moscow Code) takes Canadian consular officer Charles Hillier to Tokyo, where his first assignment is to look into the case of a Canadian citizen, banker Robert Lepage, who’s in a coma in the hospital after an auto accident. Charlie welcomes the opportunity to work with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police on the investigation, which becomes complicated after Mike Seger, a friend of Lepage’s who wanted the banker released into his care, is found dead with drugs and alcohol in his blood in the city’s notorious Roppongi area. Meanwhile, Lepage receives daily visits from the striking and mysterious Aiko Kimura, purported to be his girlfriend, but Charlie doubts that they are really together. Charlie and the efficient and beautiful Insp. Chikako Kobayashi, to whom he’s attracted, must determine whether Seger has been murdered and whether Lepage is involved in criminal activities with the yakuza. Wilkshire takes full advantage of the Tokyo setting to contrast Charlie’s Western attitudes with Eastern customs in this winning mix of diplomacy and sleuthing. (Oct.)