Daniel H Smith

In The Cold Daniel H Smith

On his way to being the first and only Japanese-American in the FBI, Asahito Mori experiences the derailment of his career (and his country at war) after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The classification of those of his heritage as "IV-C Enemy Alien" has sent him from top of his class to an internment camp in Manzanar. Months pass and Mori remains interned with thousands of other Japanese-Americans. On the other side of the country, in a small community in Maine, Native American men are dying in a peculiar manner that the local authorities have labeled suicide. They have, it seems, simply walked out into the night to die of exposure. One local judge is unsatisfied with the official explanation and calls on his friends in the FBI. With the war on there is no manpower to spare for an "unofficial inquiry" based on the suspicions of an elderly judge, no matter who his influential friends are. When the case nobody wants falls to Special Agent Bullock, newly transferred from the West Coast, he remembers his old trainee Mori... Asahito Mori, Japanese-American, native of LA, late of Manzanar Interment Camp, and novice detective, finds himself in frigid New England as WW2 rages, looking into the deaths of four men on the margins of society, and finding out just how dangerous the Homefront can be, especially to the most vulnerable people. Asahito goes from being a prisoner of his country to an agent of it, and facing dangers far worse than a small town's reaction to his ethnic heritage.