Black Dragon

by Kirk Mitchell

During World War II, Jared Campbell, a civilian homicide detective stationed at Manzanar, a Japanese internment camp in California, joins forces with Hank Fukuda, the camp's internal police chief, to investigate the decapitation murder of the camp director and the suicide of an internee

407 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1988

About the author

Kirk Mitchell is an author who is known for his time travel, alternate history, historical fiction, and adventure fiction novels. Mitchell has also created several novelizations of movies.He writes under the pseudonym of Joel Norst

Kirk Mitchell served as a deputy sheriff on the Paiute- Shoshone Indian reservations of the desert country that includes Death Valley, and was a SWAT sergeant in southern California, before beginning his career as a full-time writer.

Reviews

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit of James Ellroy with a suggestive hint of Chinatown. A murder takes place at Manzanar and an MP, a policeman prior to the war, investigates. When the government authorizes the internment of legal residents and citizens it opens the gate for the worst abuse by the unscrupulous. The laws governing Japanese immigrants prior to the war, no land ownership, no miscegenation, bare a queasily familiar closeness to the anti Jewish laws in Germany in the 1930s. A lot to not be proud of.

[Alton Motobu · Rating 4 out of 5]

At Manzanar concentration camp during WW2 the head of the "Black Dragon" gang is murdered, followed by the murder of the camp director. MP lieutenant Jared Campbell investigates with the help of the camp police chief, Hank Fukuda; prime suspect is war hero, Eddie Nitta, who lost an arm in Italy. Campbell has affair with Eddie's wife, Kimiko, and becomes obsessed with solving the crime to exonerate Eddie. Trail leads him to San Diego, San Francisco, and Yosemite. He finds a tangled web of high ranking Army officers swindling the internees out of their homes and property. Campbell eventually disposes of all the culprits. Ends like the movie Casablanca. Great story.

[joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because it touches many of my areas of interest: the internment camps, the sierras, Japanese-American bay area history. I feel that Mitchell did a decent job of conveying the complexities of life for his characters and their surroundings. For me, having driven the roads he uses to build his plot, gave reality & depth to his story. Unfortunately, this is not an easy book to find, so if you're interested, you'll have to find it used.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, suspensrful, and I was interested in the Manzanar setting. Characters, dialogue, plot, wrre all strong. However, the book pushes grisly/bloody pretty far.

[Candida · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this would be a fast paced read, but that wasn't the case. The characters were not likable, and the story was depressing. It was not my favorite writing style