GROUP B BOOKS 2023-2024: 10 Nominated books. Vote for no more than 5.

B2 Type: Amateur sleuths: cozies, and/or traditional mysteries Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara, 2021 / MVLC: 27

Basics · Briefly: Aki Ito (F), just released from Japanese-American detainment at Manzanar, hopes to meet up with Rose, her older sister in Chicago. Instead, she learns, on arrival that Rose was killed by a subway train - a suicide. Aki does not accept that her sister would die that way and is determined to learn the truth. · Protagonist: Aki Ito (F), young Japanese-American. · Setting: Chicago, 1944 as WW2 fights toward the ending in '45. · Context: This is Hirahara's first standalone. She has also written 11 other mysteries in 3 series. · % of Amazon readers giving 5-star ratings: 40% · Combined % of Amazon readers giving either 4 OR 5-star ratings: 74% · Total all Amazon ratings this book: 1,547 Long Form Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Ito's were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth. ------- “Clark and Division is a moving, eye-opening depiction of life after Manzanar. Naomi Hirahara has infused her mystery with a deep humanity, unearthing a piece of buried American history.” —George Takei “Part historical fiction, part thriller, all a deeply moving family story, set in 1944 Chicago against the backdrop of the shameful treatment of Japanese-Americans by the U.S. government. Hirahara’s gifted writing is a master class in how to bring a historical epoch to life.” —Sara Paretsky, bestselling author of the Chicago Detective V.I. Warshawski series This is an Amateur sleuth, not a cop or paid investigator story. But I wouldn't call it a cozy -- not contrived like an Agatha or Kemelman story (and there is nothing wrong with either of those or I wouldn't have put the Rabbi book on the list). There is suspense in the book, but not like a thriller. It is more of a thoughtful, well researched, historical and traditional type of mystery. Like a literary mystery! I added it for variety under this "type." –Dick Awards for this Book § Bill Gottfried Memorial Lefty Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel § Simon & Schuster Mary Higgins Clark Award § Macavity Award for Best Historical Mystery Novel