Thus: perfect summer reading.
But I have to say, if you're modelling a hero on Judge Dee-- which is great and I'm all for it-- it helps to have some of Dee's magisterial always-rightness as well. Alas, that seems to be the point on which Ms Parker balked, because Akitada wibbles over everything. I suppose she wanted a nice decent chap, very aware of ningen kankei (unlike the by-the-book Confucian cold fish Dee) who can be browbeaten by his appalling mother, and is. At which he becomes less Dee than poor old Nakamura Mondo from Hissatsu Shigotonin, without the assassin side of things.
