Shimura begins to suspect that she is being followed, not only by her ''assistant,'' the ambitious intern, but also by gangsters. Things begin to get shady, however, when Shimura is injured falling down a flight of stairs (was she pushed?) and when one of Takahashi's friends turns up dead, dressed as Mars Girl, in a river. Determined to keep her job at the newspaper, Shimura pursues Mars Girl's creator, Kunio Takahashi, in both the hip and the less-than-savory sides of Tokyo. With his help, she discovers Mars Girl-a manga that follows the adventures of a superhero who, like Shimura, is bicultural (half-Martian, half-Japanese)-and the Showa Story, in which the superhero travels back in time, to 1930s Japan. The newspaper asks Rika Fuchida, an ambitious student intern, to assist her, but Shimura prefers the assistance of her new boyfriend, Takeo Kayama. When the paper's owner decides to transform the publication from a conventional news outlet to a comic book magazine, Shimura gets what is, for her, an unwanted assignment-to write an article on the history and culture of manga, or Japanese comic books. Rei Shimura is a Japanese-American antiques dealer who, looking to supplement her income, has begun writing a column for the Gaijin Times, Tokyo's English-language newspaper. Novelist and former Baltimore Evening Sun reporter Massey (The Salaryman's Wife) takes readers on a thoughtful tour of contemporary Japanese youth culture in this accomplished murder mystery.

The Floating Girl by Sujata Massey