Descending Kinabalu

About the Book

The mystery focuses on two individuals from different cultures, an American man and a Japanese woman, who decide to work together to discover who killed their respective spouses. Mike Harden’s wife, Lauren, works for Moritani USA in Los Angeles, a subsidiary of a large Japanese trading company. Kumiko Shimada’s husband, Tatsuro, works for Moritani in Tokyo. While Lauren is on temporary assignment at Tokyo headquarters and Mike has a grant to do research on early twentieth century Japanese painters, they join a group of thirteen others affiliated with Moritani, including the Shimadas, to climb Mt. Kinabalu in Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. On the way down the 13,000 foot mountain, Lauren and Tatsuro are killed together --- she from a gunshot, he from the fall over the trail’s precipice. There are no witnesses. The local police conclude that the deaths were the result of a lovers’ quarrel. After Lauren’s funeral in the U.S., Mike returns to Tokyo to seek the real cause of her death. He enlists Kumiko’s help, though initially she is reluctant. The chapters alternate between the perspective of Mike and that of Kumiko. In the uneasy relationship between them, Mike must figure out how to work with the wife of the man everyone believes killed Lauren. While aware of the complexity of modern Japanese culture, he is careful not to do anything that would harm Kumiko’s standing in a Japan still intolerant of deviation from expectations in women’s roles. For her part, Kumiko feels obligated to prevent Mike’s inquiries from confirming his wife’s infidelity. As the novel unfolds, Mike and Kumiko must deal with the unwillingness of Moritani employees to speak to them, plus the involvement of yakuza gangsters and a Chinese holding company headed by former government officials. Information uncovered about six members of the climbing party leads Kumiko and Mike to believe any one of them could have killed their spouses. Because of their different backgrounds and ways of interpreting what they find, Mike and Kumiko disagree on who the killer actually is. Differing perceptions of events and misunderstandings about each other’s culture frustrate their efforts to arrive at a shared conclusion about who killed their spouses. Their efforts are also frustrated by additional deaths and attempts by the killer to prevent being discovered.

About the Author

Kenneth Skinner was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Sabah, Malaysia, teaching in a village near Mt. Kinabalu. Following that, he worked for an agency of the Japanese government for two years and later did research in Tokyo. He is a professor of cultural anthropology and has traveled extensively in Asia.