Leopard - Hardcover

Richard La Plante began his working life as a special education teacher in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he spent a great deal of time playing the guitar and working on songs to the amusement of his students. Following his dismissal, he formed the rock band Revenge and toured and recorded till egos clashed and noses were broken.

His first book, Tegne, Soul Warrior, a fantasy-fiction novel, combined his longtime study of Japanese martial arts with his interest in metaphysics and love of adventure tales.

He wrote a sequel to Tegne, entitled The Killing Blow, then switched from fantasy-fiction to hardcore thrillers with a popular series featuring the characters Josef Tanaka, a Japanese-American medical examiner and shotokan karate master, and Bill Fogarty, an Irish-American police Lieutenant. Mantis was the first novel in the series, followed by Leopard, Steroid Blues, and Mind Kill.

A great deal of the money earned from his books ended up in the chrome and steel accessories that adorned his custom Harley-Davidson, a 1989 Springer, an obsession which became the inspiration for his motorcycle memoir, Hog Fever. Detours, written in 2002, continues the motorcycle theme and traces a solo cross-country journey ending in Sturgis, the famous motorcycle rally in the black hills of South Dakota.

Richard and his second wife, Betina, an accomplished photographer and mother of his two sons, built their first home from the ground up on a bluff overlooking Gardiner’s Bay in East Hampton, New York.

In 2004, the family moved to Ojai, a small town in the high desert of Southern California, where they built their dream home on a mountaintop, inspiring his latest memoir, Never Again: Building the Dream House.

Richard’s other interests include anything paranormal, western boxing, and competitive swimming.

An intelligent and suspenseful follow-up to Mantis (1993). The extreme violence, however, may not be to everyone's liking. Joey Tanaka, the half-Japanese, half-American forensic pathologist, is summoned to his native Japan after the sudden death of his half-brother, whom he had crippled in a karate match when they were youths. Joey has never grappled with his guilt over the incident, and the death, which is certified as the kind of congestive failure quadriplegics often suffer, only serves to reinforce his emotions. Complicating matters is the fact that his girlfriend, Rachel (who still bears the psychological scars of being abducted in the first novel), has accompanied him and that he must deal with his cousin Ken Sato's racist hatred of all things (and people) Western. When he sees the body at the funeral, however, one look tells Joey that the death was anything but natural. The deceased has, in fact, been brutally murdered. This puts Joey and his partner, detective Bill Fogarty, who has arrived from Philadelphia to help, on the trail of a most unusual gang of serial killers led by a mysterious man known as the Leopard because of his unusual full-body tattoo, which is visible only when he is sexually aroused. The search also dredges up memories of Mishima's failed coup attempt, the Red Brigade, and discloses a new xenophobic warrior society known as the Red Mist that arose from their ashes. In the end, all the main characters' demons are purged, and the Leopard, whose identity turns out to be a surprise, is destroyed. Officially, none of it ever happened. Taut and well-presented, though the linking of sex and death is a bit clich‚d. And Japan-bashing of the sort engaged in Crichton's Rising Sun (to which this has more than a passing affinity) comes off as racist on occasion. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.