Tokyo-Noir Crime Thriller

She came to Tokyo to find her father. He has no idea she’s his daughter.

A journalist with a secret. The Englishman the underworld calls the White Dragon. And a lie her mother kept for twenty-two years. My Father the Yakuza — the Tokyo-noir thriller readers can’t put down.

★★★★★ “Hooked from the very first page.” — Goodreads readers
My Father the Yakuza by Theo St. John - thriller novel book cover
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My Father the Yakuza - crime thriller novel by Theo St. John
The Book

My Father the Yakuza

Some fathers should stay buried.

Her mother told her one lie, and told it for twenty-two years: your father is dead.

In 2001, Amy Rowan ran from Tokyo eight weeks pregnant — from the man she loved and the violence wrapped around him. She raised Emily an ocean away and let the lie harden into fact. It was never true.

Jack Turner is alive — an Englishman the underworld calls the White Dragon. And now Emily has come to find him: twenty-two, a journalist, carrying her mother’s photographs and her mother’s secret.

He has no idea she’s his daughter. She knows exactly who he is. But a father and daughter can only circle each other for so long before the blood between them pulls — a back-alley rescue, a cheap neon ring he refuses to take off, the things broken people confess on a rooftop at 4 a.m.

Then Jack learns the truth. And the violence Amy crossed an ocean to escape has been waiting twenty-two years for them both to come home.

Psychological Thriller250 pagesKurohana BooksDec 9, 2024

Also available in Portuguese — O Pai Que Nunca Conheci →

What readers say

★★★★★

“Wow. This book had me hooked from the very first page.”

Ann — Goodreads

“Everything I never knew I needed in a crime thriller.”

Samantha — Goodreads

“Thrill ride, no brakes the whole way through.”

Josie — Goodreads

“Had me hanging on every single word. Just when I thought I knew where it was going, it completely surprised me.”

Jennifer — Goodreads
Next in the Emily Watson Series

Four Women in the River

Four bodies surface in the Sumida. Four suicide notes — each signed in the wrong hand. Journalist Emily Watson is back, and this story will not stay buried.

Coming 2026

You’re on the list — you’ll hear first.

Theo St. John, author of psychological thrillers
The Author

About Theo St. John

I’m the author of My Father the Yakuza, published by Kurohana Books and translated into Portuguese and Spanish. Before turning to fiction, I built a career in civil engineering and later in the audiovisual world — working across film, television, and advertising on projects around the globe. Somewhere between structure and story, I became more interested in what breaks people than in what holds them together.

My writing blends cinematic precision with a raw, visual sensibility — drawn to the psychology of identity and the quiet violence of choice, the moment a person crosses a line and the silence that follows. My favourite film is Se7en. I’m obsessive about coffee — usually a Kenyan espresso, or a V60 Geisha from Peru when I have time to slow down.

I’m currently at work on Four Women in the River, the second novel in the Emily Watson Series — returning to the same world, digging deeper into the consequences that place the reader between the legacy of blood and the burden of truth.

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Get in touch

General Inquiries

Media & Rights Inquiries
Please contact my literary agent

michael.rose.lewis@gmail.com

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