Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE PEARL DIVER by Sujata Massey

THE PEARL DIVER

by Sujata Massey

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-621296-0
Publisher: HarperCollins

Something’s fishy in Washington’s newest Japanese restaurant.

First, Kendall Howard Johnson, DC darling and fundraiser for Senator Harp Snowden, invites her cousin Rei Shimura, newly settled in Washington after being booted out of Japan (The Samurai’s Daughter, 2003, etc.), for drinks at undercapitalized, about-to-open Bento. Stepping outside to gab on her cell phone, Kendall is promptly abducted. When pesky Rei, a dealer of Oriental antiques and an inveterate sleuth, helps locate her, Andrea Norton, Bento’s half-black, half-Japanese hostess, turns to Rei for help in finding her own mom, who abandoned her as a toddler back in the ’70s. Before long, the snooping Rei is abducted, too, and it’s unclear whether someone is targeting the cousins, starting a restaurant war between Bento and the neighboring Plum Ink, or hushing up the truth about Andrea’s mom’s disappearance and the part her husband’s second wife’s family may have played in it. Rei escapes her captors but miscarries in the process, causing serious cracks in her relationship with her boyfriend and sorrow in her aunt Norie, visiting from Yokohama and bent on planning Rei’s wedding. The reasons for Kendall’s mishap and the long-ago war bride’s decampment wend past vials of crack cocaine and a Vietnam cover-up before they’re resolved by a grenade toss, a stint in rehab, and some delicious meals served up by Bento’s talented chef.

The ending is improbable and sappy, but Massey’s pungent take on mixed marriages and East-West culture clashes is first-rate.