Billy Chaka Series by Isaac Adamson

Meet Billy Chaka, ace reporter for Cleveland's hottest-selling Asian teen magazine.  He's brash, savvy, and prone to hair-trigger fits of karate.  Billy's in Tokyo to cover the 19-and-Under Handicapped Martial Arts Championship and meet up with his friend Sato Migusion, the international renowned director of such cult film classics as Sex Up the Hotrod, Baby! But Sato never shows. Instead, the girl of Billy's dreams stumbles into a dive bar with tatooed Yakuza mobsters in hot pursuit... moreMeet Billy Chaka, ace reporter for Cleveland's hottest-selling Asian teen magazine.  He's brash, savvy, and prone to hair-trigger fits of karate.  Billy's in Tokyo to cover the 19-and-Under Handicapped Martial Arts Championship and meet up with his friend Sato Migusion, the international renowned director of such cult film classics as Sex Up the Hotrod, Baby! But Sato never shows. Instead, the girl of Billy's dreams stumbles into a dive bar with tatooed Yakuza mobsters in hot pursuit.  Then Billy will start brawls in swanky corporate sex clubs, be offered a golf club membership by a secret religious order, meet a dog trained in the ways of the Samurai, and race stolen motorcycles through the neon-choked streets of Tokyo. Packed with enough over-the-top fists action to make Jackie Chan cry, and featuring the most lovable uncool hero since Austin Powers, this hilarious send-up is a pop culture potpourri of sub-epic proportion. less

After an altercation with the director of Wildman for Geisha! -- a movie based on ace reporter Billy Chaka's life -- Chaka finds himself in Hokkaido on mandatory vacation. Trouble starts when the elderly porter of the Hotel Kitty stumbles into Billy's room and dies. That same night, the lead singer of Japan's most popular rock band turns up dead in a sleazy love hotel in Tokyo... moreAfter an altercation with the director of Wildman for Geisha! -- a movie based on ace reporter Billy Chaka's life -- Chaka finds himself in Hokkaido on mandatory vacation. Trouble starts when the elderly porter of the Hotel Kitty stumbles into Billy's room and dies. That same night, the lead singer of Japan's most popular rock band turns up dead in a sleazy love hotel in Tokyo.Billy Chaka goes to Tokyo to cover the story for Youth in Asia magazine and soon finds out there's more to the rocker's apparent drug overdose than meets the eye. A Beatles-obsessed record executive, a mute DJ, two giant kickboxing twins with an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music, a Swedish stripper working at the Purloined Kitten Club -- each play a part in the hard-boiled hilarity that ensues as Billy Chaka discovers that the rock star and the elderly hotel porter just might share a very strange link. less

Tokyo, July 2001: Hard-boiled reporter Billy Chaka is back in the neon metropolis interviewing a has-been pop singer turned pachinko fanatic for Youth in Asia magazine. Looks like an easy assignment until he witnesses a beautiful young woman suffer a seizure in the Lucky Benten pachinko hall... moreTokyo, July 2001: Hard-boiled reporter Billy Chaka is back in the neon metropolis interviewing a has-been pop singer turned pachinko fanatic for Youth in Asia magazine. Looks like an easy assignment until he witnesses a beautiful young woman suffer a seizure in the Lucky Benten pachinko hall. When she is later found dead beneath the expressway, Chaka becomes embroiled in an apparent blackmail plot involving a Ministry of Construction official, a brash nineteen-year-old girl, a shadowy entity known only as "Mr. Bojangles," and four silent figures who have a penchant for showing up uninvited inside Chaka's hotel room.As the bodies pile up and the mystery deepens, Chaka must untangle the lies, obsessions, and seemingly supernatural events that link the dead woman to a forgotten, bloody incident from the desperate closing days of World War II. Spellbinding and hilarious, Dreaming Pachinko will take you on a surreal thrill- ride through the city of the future -- a place where no one can escape the past. less

Wisecracking reporter and reluctant detective Billy Chaka is back. His latest misadventure finds him in Osaka to accept an award for an article he'd written years before about a teenage Bunraku puppet prodigy named Tetsuo. Billy quickly learns he may have been summoned for more than the award -- Tetsuo has been expelled from Osaka's most prestigious theater company following a bloody, unexplained incident involving a fellow puppeteer... moreWisecracking reporter and reluctant detective Billy Chaka is back. His latest misadventure finds him in Osaka to accept an award for an article he'd written years before about a teenage Bunraku puppet prodigy named Tetsuo. Billy quickly learns he may have been summoned for more than the award -- Tetsuo has been expelled from Osaka's most prestigious theater company following a bloody, unexplained incident involving a fellow puppeteer.While Billy tries to unravel that mystery, an American man in the hotel room next door is found brutally murdered. Investigating the homicide and its bizarre link to the young puppeteer plunges Billy into a shadowy world where dreams and reality violently intermingle and people are never who they seem. It's a world not far removed from that of the Bunraku theater that flourished in Osaka hundreds of years ago, stylishly recast for the neon-lit urban stage with decrepit gangsters, clueless expatriates, dangerous women, and one seriously deranged hotel employee. Two parts noir and one part playful irreverence, Kinki Lullaby is a sly whodunit that unfolds with the twisted charm of a fever dream. less