Arthur Cathcart, a market researcher, and his wife Florencia, an insurance company owner, are shot by home invaders after certain pieces of information are extracted from Florencia. Florencia dies, but Arthur survives the attack and fakes his own death to facilitate his investigation into the murder of his wife. The mechanics of the search are vague, and the characters paper thin. Probably not worth following the series as Arthur, and his underused sidekick Natsumi, probe the mystery even further.
After reading the first chapter it seemed that the author was mostly about description because he so loves words that several times he used 2 phrases or words together that meant the same thing. It was distracting and I wrote down three examples that stuck with me before reading the next chapter. In describing the local post office he wrote "It was an antique operation, thus far eluding modernization." Another time it was "I yelled and cried, and wept ..." And "I saw all this through a liquid veil, my eyes gushing tears ..." A bit tiresome because it took me out of the story. His style changed and tightened during the rest of the book but I found the story line a little unbelievable. His math ability moved from 3rd to 6th grade level by the end of the book, but being able to calculate quickly enough to run a daily food truck route alone, plus do enough math to accomplish all the other things he had to do? Really? I thought the author proved that he did his homework for the bones of the story, and thought out all of the details to answer fact-based questions from his readers about the mechanics of what his character did and how he did it, but having a seemingly endless supply of money for his character to accomplish things seemed a bit like cheating.
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