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ISBN 1-4184-8028-2

ABOUT THE BOOK!
                                
Frank Noguchi and Bill Emmet never meet face-to-face, but chance events from their childhood years propel them in later years toward each other, like two steam locomotives headed for a crash. How the careers of Frank Noguchi and Bill Emmet intertwine into a personal conflict provides the plot for The Cremation Murders.

Frank Noguchi, the only child of Japanese immigrants, grew up in San Francisco. With his mother and father, he spends the World War II years in an Arkansas prisoner of war camp, where his mother dies. The end of the war brings the father and son back to San Francisco, where the father operates a neighborhood grocery and Frank continues his public school education.

As a teenager, Frank grows rebellious and begins to reject his Japanese heritage of honor and responsibility for the antisocial lifestyles of local gangs. To provide his son with an opportunity to think about his choices, the wise father proposes a trip to visit the grave of Frank’s mother at the deserted prisoner of war camp in Arkansas. During this trip, father and son bond. As he nears the completion of his university education, Frank comes home one evening and discovers that someone has murdered his father and a Japanese couple.

Discouraged because the police were unable to solve the triple murders, Frank comes under the influence of a pathologist coroner, who introduces the young man to the possibilities of applying advancing technologies in criminal investigations. Encouraged that he might some day discover who murdered his father, Frank joins the police force and works with the pathologist, developing forensic tools. Upon his retirement from the police force, Captain Frank Noguchi hangs out his shingle as a private investigator and begins to search for his father’s killer, even though more than three decades have passed. Over the next weeks, Frank meets Catherine Matsura, with whom he develops a romantic relationship. Catherine assists Frank with contemporary computer technology. They attempt to solve the recent murder of a San Francisco prostitute; their investigation takes them to Boston and Dallas.

Bill Emmet’s life begins in Boston, the only child of a family of Irish immigrants, whose wealth derives from both legitimate and illegitimate businesses. Bill’s mother commits suicide shortly after the boy’s birth. Raising Bill becomes the burden ofa Mongoloid nanny, whose loving care mistakenly encourages Bill to grow into a self-centered, sexually precocious child. Later, Ben Emmet discovers that his teenage son has impregnated the nanny; he kills the mentally challenged girl. During an automobile tour to the West Coast, Ben introduces his son to adult heterosexual experiences and informs him about plans to establish another business in Texas. Ben offers his son a position with the company upon Bill’s graduation from Harvard. Prior to his son’s senior year at Harvard, as an advanced graduation present, Ben gives Bill a car and money for another tour of the West Coast. Bill invites one of his university friends to make the trip with him; they visit some of the places Bill previously had visited with his father. During the trip the young men drink heavily, with Bill experiencing several episodes of rage related to alcoholic toxicity. The boys also engage in homosexual intimacy.In San Francisco, during one of their trips to a liquor store, Bill and his friend mistake a grocery store for a liquor store. When the Japanese clerk informs the boys of their error, Enraged, Bill Emmet kills the clerk and races up the stairs to the clerk’s living quarters, in search of possible witnesses to the murder. He finds a Japanese woman, rapes, and kills her. An elderly Japanese man attempts to defend the woman and pays with his life.The police are unable to find the killer. Frank Noguchi’s father was one of the Japanese men Bill Emmet murders. And solving the three murders becomes a lifelong obsession for Frank Noguchi.
The story begins in the present with Captain Frank Noguchi and the police department destroying a gang of bank robbers, who have been terrorizing San Francisco. Captain Noguchi brings to a close a lifetime of service in the San Francisco Police Department and dedicates himself to the investigation of his father’s murder.

The second part of The Cremation Murders tells about the Noguchi Family, Japanese immigrants who settled in San Francisco near the turn of the Twentieth Century. They suffered the privations of World War II as prisoners of war in a camp in Arkansas. Frank Noguchi is the last male in the family line.

Part three of The Cremation Murders describes the Emmet Family, Irish immigrants who settled in Boston after the potato famine. This Emmet clan grew into a wealthy banking family, engaging in legitimate and illegitimate business, one of which was a kill-for-hire service. Bill Emmet is the last of the male line of this family and perfects his murder-for-hire business by cremating his victims, using a mortuary as a cover.After introducing the Noguchi and Emmet families, The Cremation Murders details the growing tension between Frank Noguchi and Bill Emmet, who never meet. Each man’s destiny begins on opposite coasts of the United States and ends on the streets of San Francisco.
The hunter becomes the hunted.