Violet Chase, the protagonist of The Nomad Detective, Volume I, by Amy Suto, takes on cases as a private investigator while searching for her sister, Adriana. Her sister disappeared at a yoga retreat in Guatemala some time prior to the beginning of the stories.
This collection of connected stories is a mixed bag. For example, the first story left me unsatisfied. Chase and her partner, Milo Baxter, find Teresa, the girlfriend of client, Jake Turner, in Costa Rica. After somewhat strange encounters there, both with Teresa and others, Chase returns to San Francisco to tell her client the outcome of her investigation. Jake, of course, does not take that well and fades into the distance. Drugs are a big part of this story, a somewhat stereotypical outlook on the region where most of the story occurs. Conning the rich foreigners, especially Americans, etc., etc.
Violet Chase is a somewhat unusual detective. She bills herself as a nomad detective, ready to take on cases that take her to parts of the world where she might find her lost sister. In addition, Chase has synesthesia, a condition in which the brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing her to experience more than one sense simultaneously. For example, when walking out into the sunshine, she sometimes senses that the sun feels sticky like chewing gum. She can also sense a person’s aura. She uses these senses to effectively size up people involved in her cases.
Although I somewhat enjoyed this novel in stories, I would have liked somewhat less of the auras and mixed-sensory signals and more of straight detective work. The Nomad Detective, while unusual, was a mid-level like for me.
The Nomad Detective, Volume I
by Amy Suto
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