Deadly "Akiko" retires from killing to restore a Zen temple on a remote island off Japan. But violent people won't let her alone.
This is "a pulp crime thriller told in fragments like stained glass" dealing with the adventures of a deadly woman ex-assassin who tries to atone for her past by protecting innocent people. Orphaned at nine, the blue-eyed and black-haired Molly Vance is brought up in Tokyo by a taciturn yakuza gangster and trained thoroughly in the martial arts by the head of an ancient cult of woman assassins who all wear the tattoo of a Habu Kurage (the poisonous stinging Medusa jellyfish). At eighteen, she avenges her adoptive father's death in a bloody rampage that destroys an entire rival yakuza clan. She then becomes a feared international assassin working for an ultra-mysterious criminal group known only as "the Organization." But upon realizing the true motives behind the killings she is assigned, the beautiful and deadly"Akiko" quits the business and retires under a false identity to a remote island in the Sea of Japan, where she begins singlehandedly rebuilding a Zen temple to expunge her dark karma. Now the Organization has found a way to get at Molly through people in her past. To save their lives and her own, she will have to unleash all her fury.