The Curse of the Mastsumoto Cherrywood: Book Two

Book Two: A ghost story that weaves the aesthetics of Japanese art with the grit of Tokyo's underworld. The dark history of the cherrywood print blocks, an organised crime family and a Melbourne detective in Tokyo—'the power of love and the love of power, like a devil’s mandala, once it rolls just you try and stop it'.
Book Two returns this generational saga to contemporary Japan. The hidden influence of the cherrywood print blocks heats in the blood-lines of the ill-fated Kota crime family. Melbourne Detective Peter Martin feels his calm and calculating style of policing unravel in the burning desire to avenge his wife's murder. With the reluctant assistance of Tokyo junior detective Kiko Honda, Martin attacks. The Curse of the Matsumoto Cherrywood is a story about the desecration of art and love, first seen in the deaths of artist Takabata and dancer Momo but also in the earlier histories glimpsed in the stories of the enigmatic warden of Matsumoto Castle in Book One. Chasing on foot, trains and automobiles, this second book in the series moves from Tokyo to Mount Ontakè in the Japanese Alps where artists and criminals face the open expression of an ancient curse. Deep in the mountains, the aspirations of artists to annotate the world and the ambitions of the power-hungry to control it meet catastrophically. These deeper motivations drive this extended art-heist saga, they inform the actions of its characters, they guide its writer.