Skin Deep (Simeon Grist #3) by Timothy Hallinan

Was actually pleasantly surprised by this! Picked it up for free way back when I started using the Kindle app and never got around to reading it, so didn’t really expect much when I cracked it open. The beginning didn’t really do anything to dispel doubt (especially since this book was written as the first in the series but was published as the third,) but once Simeon gets hired by the TV producers, the book really gets going. It’s intelligent, raw LA gumshoe noir, with a good mystery at its core and a heartbreaking coda.

Personally, I was a bit leery of the fact that Simeon seems to have a bit of the yellow fever, but his attraction to East Asians seems more a matter of aesthetics — the way some PIs have a weakness for blondes — than a post-colonial buy-in to the myth of the submissive Asian woman. It was also refreshing to read an early 1990s period piece with all its talk of DOS computers and Dynasty references. I’m really looking forward to reading more of his stuff.