Sixteen Petals
Tokyo, 1945. The atomic bombs have fallen. The war is over. The killing continues.
Colonel Jonah Hammond fought in the Bataan battles, endured the Death March, and survived three years of slow starvation in a brutal Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Now MacArthur needs his help in the ashes of Tokyo. The assignment: find a serial killer targeting Japanese civilians in a city where one hundred thousand died in a single night. Hammond is a lawyer, not a detective. But doors open for men with rank. Despite misgivings, Hammond has learned that in the Army, the right man for the job is often the wrong one by every conventional measure.
His unlikely partner is Staff Sergeant Toubo Smith. Burdened by his secret past, Smith knows that exposure will bring him to the gallows. Together they move through the rubble of a defeated empire, navigating occupation politics, racial intolerance, old loyalties, and a murderer who knows exactly what he's doing.
Sixteen Petals is a richly layered historical thriller that spans the Pacific War and its aftermath. The story weaves the battles of Bataan, the occupation of a defeated empire, and the quiet heroism of those who chose decency when the world had none left to offer. This is the third novel from James Collard, following Past Performances and Judge Not..., continuing his exploration of moral complexity in the theater of history.
For readers who understand that war doesn't end when the guns fall silent.
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