The Crimson Kimono

Friends and roommates Charlie Bancroft and Joe Kojaku, who fought side by side during the Korean War, are now partnered homicide detectives with the LAPD, Charlie a sergeant, with Joe studying for the sergeant's exam. Their next case is of murdered burlesque queen Sugar Torch. She was shot in the middle of the street trying to evade the unknown gunman, who was lying in wait for her in her dressing room. Charlie and Joe have little to go on, believing the case surrounds the new unknown man in her life and/or the new act on which she was working. Joe will delve into the Japanese community - he US born of Japanese ancestry - as that new act had a geisha/samurai warrior theme. In Charlie following another lead, student artist Christine Downs is brought into the case as someone who may be able to identify that mystery man in Sugar's life, he the leading suspect. This position places Christine's life in jeopardy if the suspect, if he is indeed the murderer, knows that she can identify him. In the process of protecting her, Charlie falls in love with her, and making the proclamation that he can see himself marrying her, Joe too falls in love with her, he not wanting to act on his feelings in his and Charlie's friendship. Regardless, these feelings by both men for Christine complicate the investigation and threaten their friendship as race enters the discussion for the first time in it previously having been colorblind.