James Melville, like James McClure, Arthur Upfield, and H. R. F. Keating, paved the way for the modern ethnic mystery. Appealing to readers' curiosity about foreign lands and foreign cultures, his cross- cultural detective stories capture Japanese, Americans, and British in situations that call attention to their different values and their different ways of perceiving the world around them. Melville teaches readers about Japanese culture and provides insights into a community- centered culture that distrusts the "eccentric," individualistic Western culture. He dramatizes the dynamics of Japanese social and business relationships and, while telling interesting stories that turn on the traditional questions of motive and evidence, opens doors into a world quite different from the reader's. While his settings are indeed exotic, they are not meant to be simply background; instead, they provide the basis for a study of manners. Thus, Melville brings to detection a new function: using...