I am currently re-reading a five book series put out by the author, John Donohue. The series follows Connor Burke, an accomplished martial artist and Asian historian living in New York. The reading experience is light and the books are relatively short, anywhere from 270 to 300 pages long. I would categorise the genre of the books as crime thrillers.
Deshi, is book two. Connor's brother, an officer in the NYPD, enlists him to decipher a strange message left by a murder victim. The message leads Connor to the samurai heritage of a mysterious martial arts sensei, the foreboding world of a Tibetan clairvoyant, and finally the wilderness of an elite mountain temple.
Book three is called Tengu. The book gets its namesake from a renegade martial artist who has named himself after the mythical mountain spirits of Japan. The Tengu mourns the vanished prestige and cultural heritage of Imperial Japan. He, like the terrorists he trains, believes the West is responsible for destroying the spiritual essence of a once-great culture.
The fourth book is called Kage. In the unforgiving landscape of the Southwest of the USA, Connor Burke works to piece together the mystery surrounding Westmann - a deceased writer - his work, and a cryptic manuscript that has captured the interest of rival smuggling gangs. Burke's only hope of solving this mystery is to call upon the aid and guidance of his teacher, Yamashita. That won't be easy.
Enzan: The Far Mountain, is the fifth book of the series. Connor is asked by a wealthy and prominent Japanese family to retrieve their daughter from a Korean drug dealer. Connor reluctantly accepts not knowing the dangers of doing so. He accepts the mission to protect his old sensei from harm but gets in way over his head.
The reason I am reading this series again is due to the author announcing he has finished writing his sixth book in the series, Keppan: The Blood Oath. In fact, he posted on his Facebook page on the 21st January a picture of his computer screen with the finished document. So I imagine we still have some time to wait as it goes into editing and publication.
John's books captivated me because he manages to interweave pop-culture crime stories in with traditional budo values and uses the protagonist to show the tension and complexities that arise from the mingling of these concepts. The author has been training in the Japanese martial arts for more than 30 years. He has trained in aikido, iaido, judo, karatedo, kendo and taiji. He has dan ranks in both karatedo and kendo. John has a Ph. D. in Anthropology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. For more on the author and his works, check out http://johndonohue.net/
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