Masuto Investigates, Volume 1

Masao Masuto is a Nisei detective on the Beverly Hiss police force—a cultured stranger in an even stranger land of traffic-clogged freeways, artery-clogging fast food...and even brutal murders. A Zen Buddhist, karate expert, and devotee of roses, he is a complex man with a singular sense of justice, taking action on his own and making moral judgements as he sees fit.

Here, collected for the first time, are the two adventures that launched the popular crime-fiction series created by Howard Fast, bestselling author of The Crossing and The Immigrants:

In Samantha, film producer Al Greenberg has been murdered—the first in a series of voilent deaths perpetrated by a killer calling herself "Samantha." Eleven years earlier, a young, starry-eyed actress with the same name had been raped by half a dozen men on a Hollywood set, and was never seen again. Now, one by one, the very same men who participated in the rape are being slain. Racing against time, Masuto must uncover the identity of the beautiful killer and stop her from completing her terrible acts of vengeance.

In The Case of the One-Penny Orange, a noted stamp dealer and his assistant are murdered and one clue that could bring a killer to justice is an 1847 postage stamp from the island of Mauritius—one of the rarest, most famous stamps in the world, worth close to half a million dollars. Before his work is done, Masuto will have uncovered a tale of greed and ritual revenge whose origins lie in the bitter memories of the Holocaust.