Asian scholar and black belt artist Connor Burke labors as a deshi—a student under the tutelage of a master warrior— a practice that draws him into the execution-style murder of a Japanese businessman in Brooklyn. Connor’s brother, an officer in the NYPD, enlists him to decipher the strange calligraphic writing left by the victim at the crime scene. The enigmatic message leads Connor to the lethal samurai heritage of a mysterious martial arts sensei, the foreboding world of a Tibetan...
Chie Miyazaki is wild and spoiled—the pampered child of a cadet line of the Imperial house of Japan. When she disappears in the United States accompanied by a slick Korean boyfriend, it sets off alarms among elite officials in Japan’s security apparatus. The Japanese want the problem solved quietly, so they seek out Connor Burke, prize student of Sensei Yamashita. Burke suspects that he’s being used, but he accepts the assignment out of honor for his revered sensei. A covert search and rescue...
[Japan] An intelligence analyst is murdered on temple grounds. [Manila] Two embassy guards go missing and a bizarre execution video is discovered by a special-forces team. [New York] Martial arts expert Connor Burke is hired as a consultant for an elite US Army training program. [Mindanao Philippines] A young Japanese ethnographer from Harvard University is kidnapped by a terrorist cell of Abu Sayeff. A renegade martial arts Sensei known as the Tengu has been recruited to train a splinter...
In the seemingly trackless waste of the desert outside Tucson, Arizona, a coyote cross border smuggler is found dead, another victim of the escalating violence on the southwest border. At the same time, a mysterious best-selling writer's death deepens the controversy surrounding his works. Rumors surround the late Elliot Westmann, with dark hints of mystic vendettas and a confrontation with an assassin sent to punish Westmann for violating a code of secrecy in his books. Westmann's...
