Purchase

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple Books

Google Play

Books-A-Million

Indie BookShop

Ripped Bodice

Add to Wish List

Also by Naomi Hirahara:

Crown City, February 2026
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook
Evergreen, July 2024
Trade Paperback / e-Book (reprint)
Evergreen, August 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
Clark and Division, August 2021
Hardcover / e-Book
Grave On Grand Avenue, April 2015
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book
Murder on Bamboo Lane, April 2014
Paperback / e-Book
Blood Hina: A Mas Arai Mystery, March 2010
Hardcover
Summer of the Big Bachi, February 2008
Paperback
Snakeskin Shamisen, May 2006
Hardcover
Gasa-Gasa Girl, March 2005
Trade Size

SNAKESKIN SHAMISEN
By: Naomi Hirahara

Delta
May 2006
On Sale: April 25, 2006
272 pages
ISBN: 0385339615
EAN: 9780385339612
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Mystery

From Summer of the Big Bachi to Gasa-Gasa Girl, Naomi Hirahara’s acclaimed novels have featured one of mystery fiction’s most unique heroes: Mas Arai, a curmudgeonly L.A. gardener, Hiroshima survivor, and inveterate gambler.

Few things get Mas more excited than gambling, so when he hears about a $500,000 win–from a novelty slot machine!–he’s torn between admiration and derision. But the stakes are quickly raised when the winner, a friend of Mas’s pal G. I. Hasuike, is found stabbed to death just days later. The last thing Mas wants to do is stick his nose in someone else’s business, but at G.I.’s prodding he reluctantly agrees to follow the trail of a battered snakeskin shamisen (a traditional Okinawan musical instrument) left at the scene of the crime…and suddenly finds himself caught up in a dark mystery that reaches from the islands of Okinawa to the streets of L.A.–a world of heartbreaking memories, deception, and murder.

Media Buzz

Morning Edition - August 12, 2010