‘An accomplished crime series which gives an insight into Japanese culture... The Inspector Inoue thrillers grip and inform.’ Thomas Waugh
Japan 2018.
One spring night Mayumi Ikeuchi is late leaving the city nightclub where she works.
Mayumi meets a stranger who offers to share a cab to Fujikawa. She is found in a park, stabbed to death, the next morning.
There is no shortage of suspects.
Inspector Inoue takes it personally. Fujikawa is his turf. He wants women to feel safe.
But domestic violence is on the rise in Fujikawa.
Inoue enlists the help of a professional profiler to identify the culprit in Mayumi’s murder.
When his own sister-in-law is targeted in an attack, Inoue is in a race against time to catch the killer before he strikes again.
Lea O’Harra lived in Japan for thirty-six years, working as an English professor at a private university in western Japan.
'Lea O'Harra offers us a whodunnit set in a Japan labouring under the weight of cultural imperialism, a country where the characters find that their friends and lovers are really strangers - and imperfect ones at that...'
Nick Sweet, author of the Inspector Velázquez series
'With her deep knowledge of Japanese culture, superb writing, and sensitivity to human foibles. O’Harra has crafted a cross-cultural whodunnit sure to please Japanophiles and mystery lovers alike.' Suzanne Kamata, author of Losing Kei
'Imperfect Strangers is a novel that probes the society in which its characters live. As such I commend it highly and wish it well on its voyage across the choppy seas of international crime fiction.' Paul Johnston, author of the Alex Mavros series
Lady First (Inspector Inoue Thrillers Book 3)
Lea O'Harra
Lea O'Harra is the pen name I have adopted for my so-called 'Inspector Inoue mystery series'. Originally Wendy Jones, since my marriage, Wendy Jones Nakanishi, I was born in America in 1954 and raised in a tiny town in the northwest corner of Indiana. Once I reached adulthood, I longed for travel and adventure. I have now lived outside the States most of my life. I did an MA at Lancaster University and a doctorate at Edinburgh University. I lived in Japan for thirty-six years, employed at a small private university. I retired in the spring of 2020 and now alternate my time between my house in Lancaster and my house in Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku. My husband is a Japanese farmer; I am the mother of three sons. I have published numerous academic articles and critical monographs and book reviews as well as writing creative non-fiction about my life in Japan. The Inspector Inoue mystery series marked my first venture into crime fiction. It is comprised of: 'Imperfect Strangers' (2015), 'Progeny' (2016), and 'Lady First' (2017). They are dissections of the dark underbelly of Japanese society as much as they are murder mysteries. These three books originally were published by Endeavour Press (the UK). They have recently been reissued by my new publisher, Sharpe Books (the UK), as well as a fourth thriller entitled 'Dead Reckoning' -- a standalone set in the American Midwest -- published in September 2022.
