Mas Arai mysteries

In the foothills of Pasadena, Mas Arai is just another Japanese-American gardener, his lawnmower blades clean and sharp, his truck carefully tuned. But while Mas keeps lawns neatly trimmed, his own life has gone to seed. His wife is dead. And his livelihood is falling into the hands of the men he once hired by the day. For Mas, a life of sin is catching up to him. And now bachi—the spirit of retribution—is knocking on his door.
It begins...

Hiroshima survivor Mas Arai first arrived in Watsonville, California in the 1940s. Now a semi-retired gardener living in an LA suburb, he returns for a cousin's funeral only to get entangled in the mystery of a young woman's murder. Was his cousin murdered, too? Mas has to figure out what happened, keep himself safe in the face of considerable peril, and uncover the mystery of a new strawberry varietal so important that someone just might be willing...

"In the seventh and final of the award-winning Mas Arai series, retired L.A. gardener Mas returns to Hiroshima to bring his best friend's ashes to a relative on a small island, only to be embroiled in the mysterious death of a teenage boy who was about the same age as Mas when he survived the atomic bomb in 1945"--