What are the motifs in Stalking the Angel by Robert Crais?

Culture and the Hagakure are recurring ideas. Mimi Warren becomes the character that the story eventually surrounds, but the plot doesn't exist without the element of Japanese culture. The characters treat this culture either with immediate dismissal or complete reverence. It is these attitudes that shape the events that unfold with Elvis Cole's case. The once clear-cut statutes of the Hagakure provide a distinctly contrasting backdrop for the corruption and cynicism in America and specifically Los Angeles. The characters become too focused on the Hagakure and what they can each gain from it. The loss of the Japanese "code" is why no one wins in the end.