Introducing "Trig"

You know where you are with a series, sort of. Starting to read Poul Anderson's Murder In Black Letter, I know in advance that it is the second of three mystery novels about the detective, Trygve Yamamura, and that I have already read the first and third installments. Thus, I do not expect any surprises. Yamamura will solve a murder. He will not marry, age, retire, die or experience any major life change. All of these things can happen to a continuing character and his series becomes more interesting when they do but they are not going to happen here. It is like watching an episode of a TV series.

I am reading the novel as an ebook and must continually alternate my screen between the text and the blog. That makes this a different kind of experience, visually. The text does not begin with Yamamura as its viewpoint character. The point-of-view character, Kintyre, is fencing with a man of whom we quickly learn that:

his surname is "Yamamura";
he is a private detective;
Kintyre addresses him as "Trig";
his first name is "Trygve";
he is tall, thin and of partly Oriental ancestry;
he prefers Japanese swords;
he smokes a pipe;
he has recently left the Berkeley police force to start his agency.

We stay with Kintyre when he and Yamamura part company but obviously more is going to happen.