The Samurai Wizard

The Wizard of 4th Street #5

by Simon Hawke

Akiro Katayama, a sorcerer agent who solves crimes involving magic in twenty-third century Japan, enlists Japan's greatest wizard and a streetwise homicide detective to help him find out who is responsible for a series of murders of women

Genres: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Science Fiction

214 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1991

About the author

Also published as J.D. Masters.

He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the penname "J. D. Masters" and mystery novels.

Reviews

[Ellie Wicks-Miranda]

Picked this book up in a thrift store; the cover and synopsis were intriguing enough and hey, only 75 cents. Plus it looked like a quick read compared to the long winded series I’m in the middle of so why not take a break?

While I enjoyed the world and premise it’s execution was irritating at times. It was very info-dumpy and unnecessarily redundant with descriptions. I realized halfway through that this book is part of a series but only after looking it up. Tbh it didn’t seem like it was part of a series, I didn’t feel lost reading it but at the same time I was so overwhelmed with all the backstory, exposition, and subplots that I kept wondering why wasn’t this made into a series?

And why’s the book so damn small?!

I’d much rather read 500 pages of this bc there was so much. The world that’s introduced *begs* to be one of those long winded series. Wasted potential, man

[Kaz]

So I picked this up kind of as a joke for the title, but was pleasantly surprised with a solid and fun little pulp novel! While the first third does have some front-loading of information that is in previous books, it was not egregious enough to be distracting and well paced so someone just jumping into the series isn't missing any key details or character dynamics. The pace is consistent through the story, helped by the frequent changes of point of view character, and I found the whole thing and enjoyable little brain-candy read. If you are interested in pulp urban fantasy and looking for a quick fun read, I'd say give it a shot!

[Kate]

callous mentions of suicide

[Jim Razinha]

[2022] Getting over Covid (after nearly three years of being careful, mostly careful, triple vaxxed, it was bound to happen), I had to crawl out of a mini reading funk. Hawke's my primary go-to. Yes, the plots are thinning, the characters as well, but it is after all, #5 in a long series. This time through, I was bothered by an unnecessary vulgar racist phrase on page 153. Also a little annoyed with a convoluted contrivance on page 154 of a relationship between a pentagram's triangles and the not far from Tolkien poem that has been running through the series (Hawke counts the points of each triangle separately to get to his numbers, but come on, five are shared, five are not, and thirty is a stretch.) Anyway, slowly nearing the end.

[2011] Fluffy, but still imaginative, and though getting a little thin, I will go ahead and re-read the last four after I take up a few unrelateds I've set aside on my nightstand.

[MarsianMan]

Decent, similar to the previous books, but with a twist. Glad to see that something is being different, but for the most part it was the same as formula as the previous books. Plot twist makes me wonder about the other books though. I am excited to see how it all pans out now.

[Helen Fleischer]

plot still a bit formulaic but good sense of place, vivid settings interesting char, dev

[Barbara Walker]

His words are awesome. Spellbinding as if you are the characters. That's a story teller and one that keep you reading never wanting to put it down.