The Fine Art of Invisible Detection

"No one noticed her. She was anonymous. She attracted no attention."

The Fine Art of Invisible Detection is the first book in the Umiko Wada series by award-winning, best-selling British author, Robert Goddard. Even though she enjoys occasionally doing some covert surveillance, Umiko Wada isn't a detective. Without intending any insult, Kazuto Kodaka, her boss at Kodaka Detectives, has said she has the gift of being invisible, but her job description is General Assistant. Twelve years a widow, after losing her husband to the Sarin attack in the Tokyo subway, it's a very satisfying way to pass her time, even if her mother feels she should be looking for marriage.

Their latest case, though, needs her active involvement. Mimori Takenaga and her mother are convinced that her father, Shitaro Masafumi was murdered, forty-two years earlier, when he was on vacation in London. While ruled a suicide, his family suspect a young student interpreter calling himself Peter Evans. A much-delayed response to a newspaper appeal featuring a blurry photo of the young man sees Umiko flying to London to meet, posing as Mimori, one Martin Caldwell.

His daughter and widow also suspect his partner, Hiroji Nishizaki, now the extremely wealthy chairman of an investment and consulting giant, then believed to have helped himself to a large sum of (possibly ill-gotten) Yen with hints of sakaiya (commercial secrets criminals) involvement. Kodaka goes to Fukuoka to chase up contacts there while Umiko departs for England.

In Greenwich, art teacher Nick Miller is a little puzzled to get a call from Martin Caldwell, someone who lived in a share-house in Exeter with Nick's late mother, Caro. Martin wants to meet up rather urgently, with information about Nick's father who, Nick has always believed, died when he was young. Martin is cagey about what he needs to say, insisting they meet in person. Queries about Martin to others from those share-house days net him only vague responses.

After Umiko recovers from her long flight, it's to a shock: Kodaka's lawyer informs her that her boss has been killed by a hit-and-run driver. Kodaka's demeanour when he handed an important file over to Norifusa Dobachi for safe-keeping indicates that the hit could be associated with the case, meaning their client and Umiko might be in danger. Should she continue her investigation, when Kodaka Detectives is now, effectively, defunct? But Umiko knows that "Every course of action, even inaction, held its hazards."

By the time Martin fails to turn up to either appointment, both Umiko and Nick are intrigued enough to try to track him down. Umiko takes a roundabout route, travelling from London to New York City then, not to Alaska, as she hopes will be assumed, but to Reykjavik, where she believes both Martin and the man who was Peter Evans, may be.

Soon enough, Umiko realises that, no matter how well she stays under the radar, there's a very tall and very nasty Japanese man on her trail, stealing documents and laptops, intent on inflicting injury and even death on anyone who gets in his way.

Already impersonating another in the course of her investigation, Umiko finds it necessary to trespasses into an English flat and engage in commercial espionage. Then to save her life, she has to perform sleight of hand with some cuffs, sneak into a Japanese tour group, and conduct a sensitive hostage negotiation with a criminal.

The blurb is a little misleading: Umiko's husband was not recently murdered, but she is a protagonist who is easy to like and respect: intelligent, perceptive, resourceful, tenacious, and surprisingly gutsy for a widow in her late forties. Fans will be pleased to know that her story continues in The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction.