The Way of the Traitor is the third novel by American writer Laura Joh Rowland in her historical mystery series set in 1690 Genroku-era Japan featuring the samurai investigator Sano Ichirō.

[1] At the start of the novel, the shogun suffers from a brief illness, and Chamberlain Yanagisawa, ruling in his stead, sends Sano and his assistant Hirata to the distant port of Nagasaki on a pointless official inspection tour.

Sano must now race against time to discover the murderer before he is brought to trial and before the Dutch ship can start an international war.

He is about to be found guilty due to perjured testimony and faces immediate execution when his assistant Hirata arrives with the location of the next smuggling operation.

After the success of her first two Sano Ichirō novels, Laura Joh Rowland wrote a third installment, The Way of the Traitor, which was published by HarperTorch in 1997.