Excerpt from City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

People had all sorts of reasons for moving to the city. Some said they fell in love with the scenery or that they liked the isolation or that they liked living in a close community. Amy didn't believe any of their stories, though. She knew the only real reason people moved out there was because they were running from somebody or something. Why else would you live in a backwater hole of a place where everyone lived in one building and your eyelashes could actually freeze? In fact, Amy had only just found out the real reason why Ma had moved the two of them out there to run a restaurant serving stuff even she knew was barely passable as Chinese food. Again, though, she wasn't about to spill any of this info to Officer Neworth.


There were just two police officers in Point Mettier: Chief Sipley and Officer Barkowski. Amy had watched enough television to know that the police station she was sitting in now was just a tiny locker room compared with what other cities had. There were the main reception area with tiny squeezed-in desks, the "interrogation room" closet they were sitting in, and a one-cell jail. Whenever there was a suspected "major crime," like when a tourist tried to kill her husband by stabbing him repeatedly with a dinner knife at one of the restaurants on the pier one summer, Anchorage police were called in, which was why Officer Neworth was there, questioning her about the body parts.

There was a knock at the door and Officer Barkowski poked his head in. "You almost done, Officer Neworth? Or have you just discovered that Amy Lin is a maniacal serial killer?" He gave Amy a friendly wink, and she smiled, despite herself. Officer Barkowski had started working in Point Mettier a year ago. He was always talking to the kids, pretending like he was one of them, making friendly conversation. Amy knew that it was an act, but at least he spoke to them like adults instead of uneducated third-world charity cases. Overall, Amy thought he was one of the good guys, but that didn't mean she was going to let him in on any secrets. Chief Sipley, on the other hand, had been in Point Mettier longer than anybody. She wasn't sure exactly what his story was. He looked kind of like a bald and drunken Santa Claus on the outside, but even though he appeared jolly, Amy knew that on the inside, he was the kind of guy who was much smarter than he let on and was always calculating something.

"Chief Sipley just radioed from the cove and says everything's been bagged and cleared out there," Barkowski reported.

Officer Neworth closed his notepad as if he had just been idling away his time, waiting for this cue. "I think we're done here."

Barkowski eyed the pad like he was just itching to take a look. "We hear there's been a lot of these cases popping up on the coast. Is that true?"

"Yeah, we've heard there've been a few in Canada and Washington as well," Neworth admitted. "This is the third set in Alaska in a year."

"Any leads?"

"No." Officer Neworth stood up from his chair. "There's speculation that they might have been suicide jumpers, or people who accidentally fell off ships."

"Jesus, that's sad."

Officer Neworth nodded. "The plastic in the boots makes them float up and carries them to shore. We don't get too many hands, though, so it was a bit unusual." He chewed on that for a moment. "Well, we don't have all the answers, and I doubt we ever will. But since we can't identify the bodies or prove any foul play, we can't exactly investigate them as crimes."

Officer Barkowski peeked over at Amy. "School's still in session, if you're done questioning Ms. Lin."

"Oh, right." Officer Neworth suddenly remembered the third person in the room. "You can go now, Amy. Thanks for your cooperation."

Amy got up slowly and a sense of relief washed over her. She exited the office into the maize-colored concrete hallway and felt like she had just cheated a lie detector test. Well, perhaps she hadn't really lied. She had just omitted a few facts about who was there. In the end, did it really matter if there were three or four witnesses, especially now that she knew it probably wasn't even a murder, just some depressed tourist who maybe jumped off a cruise ship?

Excerpted from City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita. Copyright © 2023 by Iris Yamashita. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.