Each of the book’s thirty-nine chapters begins with a haiku as a sort of epigraph. After a preamble in England, the book has three main parts, set onboard a ship travelling to the Orient, in Japan, and then back in England. What sets Dreaming Spies apart, for haiku writers, is the extent to which haiku permeates the novel, and the informative Japanese cultural immersion the book offers, covering language, customs, aesthetics, and more.

It delivers suspense, faithful period depiction, intelligent drama, and finely wrought characters, all in measured, fulsome, and thoroughly researched, historically accurate prose. This book is the thirteenth in King’s bestselling detective fiction series, and to call it mere Sherlock Holmes fan fiction would be to do it a disservice. Her book is a mystery set chiefly in Japan and England that features Sherlock Holmes and his intrepid wife Mary Russell (who serves as the narrator). Perhaps the best recent addition to this sort of “outsider” haiku novel is Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. This small but slowly growing genre of literary fiction can be celebrated for its promotion of haiku. These books are all by writers outside the established haiku community, and thus differ greatly in their understanding of haiku when compared with books such as the set of haiku novels by former Haiku Society of America president David Lanoue. Other related books include The Kobe Hotel by Saito Sanki, Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, A Haiku for Hanae by James Melville, Starship and Haiku by Somtow Sucharitkul, and such middle-grade books as The Time Warp Trio: Sam Samurai by Jon Scieszka and Dragon of the Red Dawn by Mary Pope Osborne, the latter two of which are specifically about haiku and do not merely use haiku in an incidental way. These include such books as Hisaye Yamamoto’s short-story collection, Seventeen Syllables (although only the title story is about haiku), David Patneaude’s young-adult novel, Through Thin Walls (in which haiku serves as an important plot device), Dan Gemeinhart’s brand-new young-adult book, The Honest Truth, Haiku by Andres Vachess, False Memory by Dean Koontz, The Haiku Murder by Fran Pickering, and Snow by Maxence Fermine. I have in my bookcases a growing number of fiction books that feature haiku in a consistent or substantial way. “The world rests on tiny things.” -Laurie R.

Dreaming spies by laurie r king