Skin Deep (Siobhan O'Brien, #1)

by Sung J Woo

LEFTY NOMINEE FOR BEST HUMOROUS MYSTERY NOVEL
Korean-American adoptee Siobhan O'Brien has spent much of her life explaining her name and her family to strangers, but her more pressing problem is whether to carry on the PI agency that her dead boss unexpectedly left to her. Easing into middle age, Siobhan would generally rather have a donut than a romance, but when an old friend and asks Siobhan to find her daughter who has disappeared from her dorm room, the rookie private detective's search begins in Llewellyn College.
A private institution of higher learning in upstate New York, Llewellyn, for the first time in its two- hundred-year history, has opened its doors to men, causing a clash between the female students and their former fashion-model president. The financial reasons prompting the change seem like a ruse when fringe- group The Womyn of Llewellyn, aided by Siobhan, discover a newly built science center, which is under 24- hour surveillance.
As Siobhan delves deeper into locating the missing girl and campus politics, she encounters vegan cooking that just might kill her, possibly deadly yoga poses, and politely dangerous billionaires. This first in a new series introduces an endearing PI heroine readers aren't going to want to put down.

• ISBN10: 194799395X
• ISBN13: 9781947993952
• Publish Date: 3 September 2020 (first published 21 July 2020)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 13 June 2024
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Polis Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 86000
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Skin Deep is the first novel in a sharp new American PI series by Sung J. Woo. Released 21st July 2020 by Agora, it's 325 pages (print version) and is available in paperback and ebook formats.

This is a well written modern PI procedural with a strong intelligent female protagonist whose straightforward missing persons case turns into a tangled web of conspiracy and corruption. Interestingly there's no murder in this one, so it's can't precisely be called a murder mystery, but it is fast paced, moderately action filled, well written and with a convoluted plot of numerous interwoven threads. The author has also included a light romance subplot which, happily, doesn't threaten to overpower everything else which is going on (and it's a fair effort to keep the disparate threads and secondary characters straight, but the author does a good job).

The pacing is even and despite being a little over the average length for the genre, it never dragged and I finished it in one setting. It's an easy and engaging read, although the denouement was unexpected and not entirely satisfying. I'm looking forward to future installments to see what the author has in store. I liked that Siobhan is unexpected in a lot of ways and not some superwoman who figures everything out instantly. She's plucky and intelligent and a little bit sarcastic and I liked her very much.

Four stars. This one will appeal to fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels and similar.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.