The Cry of Cicadas: A Byrns on the Homefront Mystery
October, 1941. After new friend Tadeo Suzuki is found dead at the foot of a cliff, his clothes doused in alcohol and a flashlight nearby, former New York City police detective Max Byrns begins to investigate on his own. Sure that Tadeo was not what local officials claim—an alcoholic who lost his footing or committed suicide, or a spy who stumbled while signaling offshore Japanese operatives—Max, his wife Elizabeth, and their son Philip, on leave from the US military, investigate individuals with motives: those anxious to acquire Tadeo’s property before he and his family are taken to internment camps, Japanese haters, and men and women who could be actual spies for the enemy.
As the author of the historical crime series The Viennese Mysteries as well as other mysteries, Jones is expert in the elements of a good police procedural—interspersing likely suspects with the seemingly uninvolved as well as downright threatening characters, twisting and turning plot lines, and keeping readers on their toes. (The identity of the perpetrator was clear as miso to this reader, that is, until…)
Jones smoothly weaves in historical context: the fears and distrust of ordinary citizens toward Japanese Americans and the effect of the 1942 Presidential Executive Order that labeled the West Coast as a war zone, excluded Japanese Americans, and eventually removed them from their homes and businesses to guarded encampments. Jones also fleshes out a complex lead character who seemingly will be the subject of future novels in Max Byrns, a man who is gradually overcoming the sequelae of the traumatic shooting of a young man in New York and his own serious chest wound. A character this reader would welcome meeting again.
