The world’s mystery novelists and their superfans slinking into San Diego this week for Bouchercon

Author Naomi Hirahara and her new novel "Evergreen." — Courtesy of Naomi Hirahara
Author Naomi Hirahara and her new novel “Evergreen.”

UPDATED: August 29, 2023 at 1:45 PM PDT

In 2003, Naomi Hirahara walked through the doors of Bouchercon, the annual mystery and crime fiction convention which was being held that year in Las Vegas.

She was just a few months away from publishing her first mystery novel, “Summer of the Big Bachi,” which would introduce her character Mas Arai, a Hiroshima survivor turned Pasadena gardener, to the world. Mas — who was inspired by Hirahara’s own father — would go on to star in six more of Hirahara’s crime novels.

“I was terrified,” Hirahara recalls. “There were thousands of people. You don’t know what kind of world you’re going to enter.”

Two decades and 13 novels later, Hirahara is making another trip to Bouchercon. But this time, it’s in San Diego — and she’s going to be the toastmaster.

Founded in 1970 and dedicated to the memory of mystery author and book critic Anthony Boucher, Bouchercon World Mystery Convention draws mystery novelists, publishers, editors, agents and fans from the U.S., Canada and Europe for conventions that feature mixers, discussions, writing workshops and book-gs. The event moves to a different city each year and draws an annual crowd of several hundred attendees. This year’s guests of honor are acclaimed authors David Baldacci (“The Innocent”), Ann Cleeves (“The Crow Trap”) and Jacqueline Winspear (the “Maisie” series).

The convention will be the latest book tour stop for Hirahara, the Pasadena native whose novel “Evergreen” was published by Soho Press on Aug. 1. It’s the second installment in a series that began in 2021 with “Clark and Division,” which introduced the character of Aki Ito, a young Japanese American woman in 1944 who had been imprisoned with her family in the Manzanar concentration camp.

In “Clark and Division,” Aki investigated the death of her older sister, who was killed by a train in Chicago, where the family was relocated after their time in Manzanar. In “Evergreen,” Aki and her parents have been allowed to return to their home in Los Angeles, where Aki takes a job as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights — and soon finds herself investigating another suspicious death.

In addition to her appearance at Bouchercon, which runs from Wednesday to Sept. 3 at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina, Hirahara will be featured at several other events in California in late August and through September. She spoke about “Evergreen” via telephone from Pasadena. This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

Q. Did you know when you were writing “Clark and Division” that you’d be bringing Aki back?

No. Even with the first Mas Arai novel, I thought of it as a standalone. Both of those books, the first Mas Arai and “Clark and Division”, took a lot out of me. “Clark and Division” didn’t take as long for me to write as my debut, but it took an emotional toll, and I was writing most of it during the pandemic, too. That kind of claustrophobia, especially in the beginning when Aki is dealing with living in Manzanar, was a mirrored kind of experience, where I was dealing with the same kind of confinement like we all were. And then it’s opening up, and you’re kind of tiptoeing outside, trying to re-look at the world: Do I need to act differently? How is the world different? So I knew that Aki was going to have a similar psychological experience.

Q. Mas Arai is a Hiroshima survivor, and of course Aki was in Manzanar. Writing about that must have been painful, but was it also cathartic in any way?

That’s why I like the mystery genre, because our characters have agency. They’re supposed to do something, and no matter what kind of trauma they’ve gone through, they can’t just stay there. If Aki had not encountered this tragedy with her sister, she would not be able to analyze or feel everything the family had gone through.

Because I think the inclination is, “Let’s gird up. Let’s forget what happened, and go forward, and make the best out of it.” Which in some ways is very healthy, I guess, but when something super tragic has happened, I can’t ignore it. I’ve got to be there while taking my steps forward. I know people like that, in my family and my community, and it is very inspirational for me to think about how they’ve had to operate, when I encounter tough times. There is a precedent for people being in the muck, but still figuring out where to go next. In that way, it kind of inspires me.

Q. How would you say Aki has changed between the events of “Clark and Division” and “Evergreen”?

I think she’s become less naive. There’s still a naivete about her, but she’s cognizant that her upbringing has protected her, sheltered her, from certain experiences. I think she knows that her personal experiences so far don’t paint the full picture of what it’s like for all Japanese Americans. And I think just knowing that your story is just one part of a larger story, I think that’s growth. She’s still insecure. She’s married now, but even though she’s married, she still has a lot of insecurities. I think that any 20something, no matter what era she is from, is going to feel that way.

Q. “Evergreen” takes place in Boyle Heights and Little Tokyo. Did you spend a lot of time researching what those neighborhoods looked like in the 1940s?

Writing “Evergreen” was so different from “Clark and Division,” because I knew close to nothing about Chicago, which was really frightening. I needed my local guides to kind of show me around. But it was quite the opposite with “Evergreen.” My husband was born in Boyle Heights, and I worked at the newspaper, The Rafu Shimpo, just like Art does. In a way, both not knowing much and not knowing too much can cause a writer problems. If you don’t know enough, you’re going to make some errors. And if you know too much, it’s hard to figure out what you need to focus on. What’s the important part of the story?

I’m writing genre fiction, so I need to give just enough. The readers don’t need this whole history of Los Angeles in 1946. What was really lucky for me was that the newspaper that I worked for finally became available through the Los Angeles Public Library as a digital version, and that gave me the key to the timeline. I did play around with it in a few places, but looking through the newspaper, I could hang my impressions on actual events, and that was helpful.

Q. You’re going to be the toastmaster at this year’s Bouchercon in San Diego. Can you give us any hints about what you might have in store for this year’s event?

My approach is to make it a welcoming place. I just want to set the tone as the toastmaster and make people feel welcome. There’s going to be a lot of humor. I’ve done improv, so on Sunday we’re having an improv session with some other writers who allegedly know improv. I’m also going to be emceeing the opening night reception, and we’re gonna start it off with a game. I want to make it very interactive and involve both longtime conferees and new ones. We need some music, so we’ll put a little Beach Boys on. It’s going to be great. And who wouldn’t want to go to San Diego, you know?

“Evergreen” by Naomi Hirahara (Soho Press, 2023; 312 pages)