It's Ken Tanaka's turn to stage a mock mystery for the L.A. Mystery Club and he's determined to do it right. Tanaka sets himself up as a fake P.I., office and all, only to have a femme fatale straight out of the movies try to hire him. Taking the case on a whim, Ken's detecting leads him to a mutilated corpse in a Little Tokyo hotel room. The police suspect Tanaka, and to clear his name, he becomes caught up in a mystery involving the Japanese Mafia and an international smuggling scheme.

Not an LA based book, but an LA based detective... the follow-up to Death in Little Tokyo
Unemployed computer operator and amateur sleuth Ken Tanaka is thrilled at the chance to visit his ancestors' homeland, especially when it's courtesy of a Tokyo talk show that wants to interview him about his role in solving a recent murder case. But Ken's fifteen minutes of fame could prove fatal--if the Japanese Mafia has its way. Why has the Yakuza targeted him? The answer, Ken discovers, is tied to the murder of an organized-crime figure in Manhattan, to the bizarre, sex-related death of a student in Japan...and to his own purchease of an ancient samurai sword at a Los Angeles garage sale. Now Ken is on the trail of a 300-year-old mystery that could soon have him pushing up bamboo shoots.