In my readings of books about Japan in the ’80s and ’90s, it seemed that publishers assumed that if you didn’t have an enigma, you didn’t have a book.

In John David Morley’s “Pictures from the Water Trade,” it is the writer’s use of an alter ego to cleverly disguise his autobiography as a work of imagination that provides the element of mystery.

Pictures from the Water Trade, by John David Morley.272 pagesHARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS