The third book in Josh Reynolds’ Daidoji Shin series of Legends of the Five Rings detective novels, The Flower Path sets its mystery within the walls of a theatre during the chaos of opening night. Coming worryingly close to a semblance of respectability, Daidoji Shin is now the proud owner of the refurbished Foxfire Theatre, and has high hopes for the first production and its new, somewhat high maintenance lead actress Noma Etsuko. A lot is resting on this opening performance for both Shin and the theatre company, but when Etsuko collapses on stage during the first act, Shin has to put his investigative skills to good use and find out who poisoned the little-liked diva, and why. Tensions among the cast, crew and even the high-ranking representatives of many of the great clans in the audience, however, don’t make his investigation any easier.
Less a locked-room mystery and more an unlocked-and-unsecured-theatre mystery, this nevertheless has fun with its constraints, Shin finding his options somewhat limited by the need to identify the culprit before the entire audience goes home at the end of the performance. The whole thing takes place within the theatre in the run up to and during the play, moving through the dressing rooms, boxes, mazelike corridors and even the stage as Shin juggles his responsibilities towards his guests and his investigation into the poisoning, while the cast flit between costumes and scene changes, and the hidden tensions within the theatre slowly rise to the surface. It quickly becomes clear that Etsuko has as many enemies as admirers, and is at the heart of a wide-reaching web of grudges, suspicions and rivalries within both the company and the broader reach of Rokugani society.
As expected, this continues the series’ approach of setting fairly gentle, grounded Golden Age-esque mysteries in the feudal Japan-inspired world of Rokugan, and eschewing most of the more fantastical elements of the setting in favour of clan politics and small-scale personal conflicts. What this approach does so well is the way it explores the Rokugani life in microcosm through the lens of something fairly intimate and character-driven, in this case using the inherent tensions within a tight-knit theatre company to reflect the setting’s complex web of social hierarchies, clan alliances and political rivalries. A theatre is an ideal place to set this sort of mystery, and Shin’s status as both a high-ranking nobleman and a figure at the centre of much speculation, as well as giving him plenty of challenges, allows for a typically entertaining perspective as he gradually teases out the truth.
There’s a lot of characters to keep track of here, what with various actors, stagehands, nobles and bodyguards, so the cast list at the back of the book comes in handy as Shin bounces from one to the other asking questions and deflecting pointed social barbs. There’s perhaps even more verbal jousting than in previous novels, particularly in Shin’s dealing with the unsmiling representative of the secretive Scorpion clan, and accordingly much less blade-wielding action (and sadly, if understandably, a bit less of Kasami), but the murky political waters that Shin navigates provide plenty of danger even so. Compared to the first two books there’s a slightly different feel here, with its enclosed setting and smaller scale, but it feels like a natural extension to what’s gone before and a clear sign that there’s scope for this series to run and run (which it hopefully will!). All told it’s a smart, satisfying detective story in its own right and another fantastic, comforting instalment in a tremendously entertaining series.
Review copy provided by the publisher – many thanks to Aconyte Books and Josh Reynolds!
See also: reviews and interviews for the previous Daidoji Shin novels
See also: the main Aconyte Books page on Track of Words
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