If you’d have told me that I’d enjoy a mystery with a theme of flower arranging I’d have thought that you were off your head. However Massey weaves another good (and quite un-cozy) plot around the cut throat world of Japanese ikebana.

There was a good bit of timing here for me, this book takes place during the cherry blossom season in Tokyo with everyone running around… ooops no, one doesn’t run in Tokyo in a dressy kimono… walking around to cherry blossom viewing parties. The reason this is good timing is that the cherry and apple blossom trees are in blossom here at the moment and reading the book has made me notice how pretty they are even more than usual.

This series is definitely feeling a lot more Japanese as it goes on. The Japanese-American protagonist Rei Shimura has really come to life for me. This book couldn’t have been set anywhere else and still worked. It was also good to see the return of Rei’s ex-flatmate Richard in this book; In the first in the series he seemed to be being set up as an interesting sidekick character but he was absent from the second.

So far each book in this series is an improvement on the last and I’m looking forward to the rest.