Lord Leclerq and Other Poems (1865)

Unexpectedly and without warning, Michael Harrison is framed for the murder of a Tokyo geisha, Akiko Takeuchi, with whom he had been involved. Harrison is an executive of an American hi-tech company partly owned by a Japanese electronics giant. He knows Akiko committed harakiri for reasons of the heart, but the evidence has been skillfully altered to make it look like murder. He quickly becomes the object of a nationwide manhunt with attention at the highest levels of their government. The American Embassyas hands are tied because he is charged with the murder of a Japanese national on Japanese soil. The chase takes him from Tokyo to Kyoto to Kobe in a desperate search for the evidence that will clear himaa document, the contents of which he is not certain, but strongly suspects that if revealed would be a major if not fatal blow to Japanas ambitions in the Pacific Rim. He manages to evade capture even though the body count escalates, all considered murders as in the case of Akiko. Chrysanthemum is an intriguing mystery in which the author takes us from the cerebral world of Silicon Valley to the emerging military-political ambitions of a new Japan. This carefully structured, scrupulously detailed novel has enough action and danger to satisfy any reader.