I was writing the first book, Summer of the Big Bachi, while I worked as an editor for a Japanese American newspaper in Little Tokyo, adjacent to Los Angeles’ Skid Row. While we know all things must come to an end, that one familiar protagonist…makes us believe in a parallel universe where characters live on forever. Our own mortality drives us to series fiction. My sleuth, Mas Arai, a Los Angeles-based gardener and Hiroshima survivor, is more than a fictional character he represents my late father’s life history, and the other men and women of his generation and ethnic background. But again, with our favorite character in control, we somehow feel safe and protected.īoth these feelings are true for me, not only as a reader but also as a creator, the writer of the Mas Arai mystery series. With mysteries, there’s also no added illusion that our world is perfectly pretty-it is, in fact, defiled, full of masquerading criminals, friends and neighbors who are one step away from killing someone. While we know all things must come to an end, that one familiar protagonist-Jack Reacher with his very limited wardrobe, Mma Precious Ramotswe sipping her bush tea in Botswana, and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache wandering around the Quebec village of Three Pines-makes us believe in a parallel universe where characters live on forever.
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