Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
Reluctant Private Eye Umiko Wada takes on a seemingly straightforward missing persons case, things are made more complicated by links to an investigation carried out by her former boss. One that involved corruption reaching back to the chaotic last days of the war and a psychic with an uncanny ability to predict earthquakes.
In this, the second outing for the unassuming but determined Wada, Robert Goddard presents the streets of Tokyo as being no less mean than those of LA. Getting down them in one piece requires steady nerves and the knack of being able to look over both shoulders at once.
Flicking between the present day and the mid-nineties Goddard breathes new life into the private eye novel, and suggests the long shadows cast by recent history. He deals skilfully with the chaotic endgame of the war, a time when unscrupulous people could find the means to make their fortune amongst the rubble. amongst the rubble.
In Wada and her late boss Kazuto Kodaka he gives readers two sides of the PI coin, one quiet and deceptively ordinary, the other the spiritual kin of the hard drinking and slightly chaotic archetype made familiar by Hollywood. Both operate on the edges of legality with little in the way of a safety net and are motivated by a strong sense of right that often gets them into trouble.
This latest outing for Wada takes a familiar genre into new cultural territory with sensitivity, fans will already be hoping she takes another trip down those mean streets sometime soon.
