I loved the metafictional aspect and the way the various narratives intertwined, but it strikes me as such an author's-eye-view of publishing and the editorial process. You know, "I wrote something profound and touching and true, but then the editor forced me to betray my artistic vision and make it crass and commercial!" And I'm not saying this doesn't happen (or that bigotry of various sorts doesn't play into what changes editors demand you make, as it does in this book), but there is here, as there so frequently is in novels about writing/publishing from the writer's perspective, this sense of the editor as a lone malevolent force totally divorced from any company or industry. The editor, it is implied, demands these changes because she herself is a manipulative, grasping, greedy person, not because of any external pressures. (It's interesting to me that this is the case even though she is identified as an associate editor; I don't know about the 1940s, but these days that would almost certainly put her near the bottom of the editorial hierarchy and therefore subject to various diktats from above, to say nothing of the pressures that can come from outside the editorial department--but in novels about writers there never are any other departments, just these mysterious free-floating editors.)

I'm complaining a lot about a book that I mostly enjoyed, and I realize I'm kind of missing the point, but it happened to be a particularly extreme example of the things I frequently find irritating in books about writers. ( )

Gordon McAlpine weaves together three stories, set in Los Angeles in 1941-42, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. (I) Japanese-American Sam Sumida ditches his art professorship to search for his wife's murderer as the police seem disinterested in solving the crime. (II) Korean-American Jimmy Park is recruited for a secret government mission to trap and eliminate the head of a Japanese spy ring, a deadly female assassin, codename The Orchid. (III) Finally, Maxine Wakefield is a book editor (i.e., the title character), who encourages the Japanese-American author, Takumi Sato, rewrite his book from (I) to (II) given the rising anti-Japanese sentiment as he is forced into the infamous Manzanar prison camp. I liked how the plotlines came together. ( )

A man searches for his wife's killer at the beginning of World War 2 in Los Angeles. ( )

A quick read and an interesting writing exercise in the noir mystery tradition. An editor (with a blue pencil) is the femme fatale to a Japanese American author and his character, who gets written out of his novel in the wake of Pearl Harbor and the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps. The structure is fascinating, entirely excerpts from two draft novels -- the one the editor is asking for, and a revision of the one the author wrote, which interacts with the one the editor is asking for -- and correspondence from the editor to the author. ( )

What happens to characters that are edited out of stories? Gordon McAlpine explores this question in this playful noir metafiction. Takumi Sato is an aspiring novelist whose debut follows Sam Sumida as he seeks to solve the mystery of his wife’s murder. Unfortunately for Sato, his novel is rejected with advice for a major revision solely because he and his protagonist are both Japanese-Americans and this happens to be America following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese-Americans are all now suspicious and subject to overt racism in their daily lives. McAlpine cleverly exposes this unfortunate period by using three narratives in this entertaining novel: the original piece wherein Sumida and the prime suspect in his wife’s murder have literally been edited out of existence; Maxine Wakefield’s editorial correspondence with Sato regarding how best to package his story so that it would be more palatable to an American (read White) audience; and excerpts from the revised novel— “The Orchid and the Secret Agent”—whose protagonist is now an excessively loyal Korean-American and the bad guys are now a Japanese cabal lead by an evil Japanese woman who is vaguely reminiscent of Samida’s murdered wife. These Japanese spies are brutally homicidal, devious and intent on destroying America—reminiscent of how many American viewed all Japanese-Americans at that time. Don’t be discouraged if all of this sounds quite confusing because McAlpine does a masterful job of keeping all of these balls in the air and bringing everything neatly together in the end.

The two stories are almost too pulpy to be seriously considered as worthy additions to the noir cannon. They might best be viewed as parody. However, the underlying theme of American racism toward Japanese-Americans during World Was II is particularly evident in both. This was a time when the rug was figuratively pulled out from under most Japanese-Americans: their property was confiscated—never to be returned; they were viewed as devious and suspicious; and they were interned at remote sites. Because the Japanese internment experience is not covered in this story, readers should consider looking at the marvelous recent book called “The Train to Crystal City” by Jan Jarboe Russell. Sato’s original Japanese-American protagonist is exposed to particularly vicious and overt forms of racism while doing routine things in LA. Likewise, Sato’s editor at Metropolitan Modern Mysteries feels no compunction about using code words and covert racism in her supposedly helpful recommendations, including applauding his use of the Caucasian pseudonym, William Thorne. Like most loyal Japanese-Americans, Sato submits to her racism for the good of the order. And like many young Japanese-American males, he volunteers for military service seeing action in the European theater. ( )