Preamble
If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here. Or you can take a look at my short story collection of cosy mysteries featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
See also
These lists capture other stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- Miss Sherlock
- The first book, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
Review
I really enjoyed the first entry in this new series, the 2021 Fine Art of Invisible Detection, I was keen to catch this second novel when the library could deliver it to me!
This novel cements the pattern for Goddard’s Umiko Wada series—international travel (this time just to the US), a narrative that weaves her dead boss’ previous cases with Wada’s own investigation, and an interest in the underbelly of corruption and the super-rich.
I still enjoy Wada, the formerly reluctant, now thriving female detective, and her pragmatism, and it was interesting to have a subplot involving her mother and her love of sumo wrestling. Her mother’s lodger, disgraced former wrestler, comes in useful once or twice for Wada, and I assume we will see more of him in the next instalment.
I was interested in the historical contextualisation of the crime—like many Brits, most of what I learned in school about World War II was Eurocentric—but this is really at the outside edge of historical events where key figures could conceivably still be alive. The more important historical background, however, relating to the Kobe Sensitive, is really fascinating and a great mystery for both Wada and her ex-boss to explore in their separate timelines.
This is an effective development of the key themes and features that Goddard developed in Book 1, but I found the progress a little slower, and in book 3 I hope there might be some more variation whereby Wada doesn’t need to travel to the UK/US, which seems like a device to make the plot more accessible/interesting to an English-speaking audience.
Take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies; order now!
Dominique Gracia 
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