Rei’s family from her father’s side lives in Japan. In one of the later books, author Sujata Massey has described that only one member from the Howard family tries to reach to Rei when she shifts to Washington, D.C., and that is Kendall Howard. The mother of Rei is described as a member of the Howard family, which is very influential in the United States. However, she does face difficulty in the writing part of the language.

While living in Japan, Rei is often treated as a foreigner in spite of the fact that she can speak the Japanese language fluently. Whenever she is in the U.S., she is often mistaken by others to be of a complete Japanese ancestry. The appearance of Rei Shimura has been described by author Sujata Massey as more Japanese instead of Caucasian. In Japan, Rei tries her hand at various jobs, beginning from working as a columnist for the daily newspaper Gaijin Times and finally settling down as an antiques dealer. She was raised by her American mother and Japanese father before she decides to migrate to Tokyo. Rei’s birth takes place in San Francisco, California, and she spends most of her growing years in The United States. In this book, she goes on to solve the mystery related to the murder of a woman during a sightseeing trip. The character of Rei Shimura makes her debut in the first book of the series titled ‘The Salaryman’s Wife’. Later on, Rei uses her identity as an antiques expert to hide her other identity as a sleuth in order to solve the mysteries with the help of her own independent investigation. But, due to the mysterious events happening around her throughout the series, she is intrigued to take up the role of an amateur sleuth.

Rei is depicted as a Japanese-American woman who wishes to become a dealer of antique items and set up her own antiques shop in Tokyo, Japan. All the books in this series revolve around the life of the fictional character known as Rei Shimura. This series is comprised of a total of 11 mystery novels, which were released between the years 19. The Rei Shimura series is a series of mystery and suspense novels written by the Agatha Award winning American author of historical fiction and international mystery, named Sujata Massey.

The Salaryman's Wife by Sujata Massey