Description:

**A tangled web of deceit strikes very close to home in this new mystery of ancient Japan featuring Sugawara Akitada** Eleventh-century Japan is the expertly realized setting for I. J. Parker?s ingenious mystery series featuring sleuth Sugawara Akitada. In *The Hell Screen*, Akitada is on his way to the bedside of his dying mother when bad weather forces him to take refuge in a temple whose central treasure is a brilliantly painted hell screen. Perhaps its violent imagery influences his dreams: that night he is awakened by a scream. It?s only after Akitada returns to a scene of domestic unhappiness and scandal that the significance of that cry becomes clear. For while he slept, a woman was murdered, and now he must find her killer.