The Hell Screen

Fascinating historical detail and well-drawn characters distinguish Shamus-winner Parker’s second Japanese mystery (after 2002’s well-received Rashomon Gate).

On his way back to the capital city of Heian Kyo (now Kyoto), Lord Sugawara Akitada, a government official with a knack for stumbling into crime, stops at a monastery to shake off the cold and get a few hours sleep. Other guests of the Buddhist monks include a well-dressed woman and her companion, a troupe of actors and a renowned artist.

After Akitada views the artist’s work-in-progress, aptly called the “Hell Screen,” his sleep is filled with nightmarish images and a bloodcurdling scream. Not sure whether he was dreaming, Akitada wanders around the monastery but finds nothing amiss. After an early morning departure, Akitada arrives at his ancestral home to visit his dying mother and soon learns of a heinous murder.

Realizing the crime took place at the monastery where he slept, Akitada can’t resist investigating. Many complications and subplots ensue, all rendered in expertly evocative prose. Parker’s remarkable command of 11th-century Japanese history-from the rituals of the royal court to the minutia of daily life within Japan’s often rigid caste system-makes for an excellent whodunit.

Readers will be enchanted by Akitada, an honorable sleuth who proves more progressive than his time.

THE HELL SCREEN

A Mystery of Ancient Japan

by

I. J. Parker

Book 2 of the

Sugawara Akitada Series

Copyright © 2003

by I. J. Parker

Characters

The Hero and His Household:

Sugawara Akitada

~ An eleventh-century nobleman, returning from government assignment

Tamako

~ His wife

Yorinaga (Yori)

~ His young son

Lady Sugawara

~ The widowed matriarch

Akiko

~ older of, Akitada’s sisters, married to Toshikage

Toshikage

~ Nobleman, secretary of the Bureau of Palace Storehouses

Takenori

~ oldest son and assistant

Tadamine

~ His second son, captain in the army

Yoshiko

~ The younger of Akitada s sisters, unmarried

Tora

~ Akitada’s retainer, former soldier

Genba

~ retainer, former wrestler

Seimei

~ elderly secretary

Saburo

~ servant belonging to Tamako s family

Characters Involved

in the Murder Cases:

Nagaoka

~ merchant dealing in antiques

Nobuko

~ wife

Kojiro

~ younger brother, a landowner

Uemon

~ of an actors’ troupe

Kobe

~ Superintendent of metropolitan police

Dr. Masayoshi

~ Coroner

Abbot Genshin

~ Head of the Eastern Mountain Temple

Eikan and Ancho

~ Two monks

Noami

~ painter

Yasaburo

~ professor, father-in-law of Nagaoka

Harada

~ drunken bookkeeper of Yasaburo

Danjuro

~ actor with Uemon’s troupe

Gold

~ acrobat

Miss Plumblossom

~ Retired acrobat

Yukiyo

~ maid

Prologue

The snoring behind her changed to an unintelligible mumbling, and she turned her head sharply. But it was nothing, part of a drunken stupor. She returned her attention to the dark, wet courtyard outside. In a moment the snoring resumed. Men were such weak-minded animals!

Surely enough time had passed. It must be done by now. She shivered and pulled her silk gown more closely around her shoulders.

Earlier, when she had entered this room—a place of rest and prayer for generations of pilgrims—she had read with amusement some of the inscriptions they had left behind on its walls. One was accompanied by a drawing of a seated Buddha and the judge of the dead, King Emma. Smiling and praying figures surrounded the smiling Buddha, but in front of the glowering king, a fierce demon was spearing screaming people to put them in a vat boiling over a fire. The unknown artist had taken pains and achieved a certain gruesome realism. The inscription said, “Release me, Amida, from desire! Save me from eternal torment!”

She was intimately acquainted with desire, but fortunately she was not superstitious. No, she had no time for the foolishness of the religious.

Stiffening, she leaned forward intently. Had that been the sound of a door closing? This was the most dangerous time. A careless move by the one she was waiting for, some guest on his way to relieve himself, or a monk bent on predawn austerities, and all would be lost. But the courtyard lay silent again among the trees. Strangely, there were not even the cries of night birds or the stealthy rustlings of fox or badger. Perhaps the rain had spoiled their hunting.