Siobhan O’Brien here. With a name like mine, you may envision a freckle-faced Irish lass at your doorstep. I don’t blame you one bit – I’d be the first to admit that I’d think the same way. But I have jet-black hair (with a few strands of gray – thank you, big-four-oh), a pair of beady black eyes, and let’s just say I’m closer to Lucy Liu than Lucy Lawless.

I was born in South Korea and was adopted by an Irish father and a Norwegian mother. (Can you guess who got to name me?) I have an adopted brother, Sven, who is African American. (Can you guess who got to name him?) We grew up in upstate New York, and I became a journalist for the Athena Times, a feature writer for movie and restaurant reviews. Nice job, until the internet mauled my beloved newspaper to bankruptcy. Thank goodness for Ed Baker, who hired me for his detective agency out of the goodness of his big, generous heart. I’ve been helping him out for almost two years, and my assignment this morning was to take photographs of a divorced husband at the behest and monetary remuneration of his angry ex-wife. Turns out the hubby is breaking the terms of their separation agreement, having female company on his weekends with their son. I’m not exactly happy about this particular task at hand, but it is what it is. If I only want to work with nice people, I’m in the wrong line of work.

After I get my requisite snapshots, I grab some breakfast. Can I just say how much I like food? My mom may be Nordic, but I grew up eating Italian food more than anything else; I could eat her pan of spinach lasagna and nothing else quite happily for the rest of my life. When I went to Camp Wooram in St. Paul, Minnesota after turning sixteen, where I learned of my Korean heritage, I made kimchi until my fingers turned red from the hot pepper. If you’ve never had bulgogi, what are you waiting for? Thin marinated strips of beef, grilled to perfection; the secret ingredient is sugar.

Anyway, after finishing off my hungry-woman breakfast, I head over to Buffalo Street where our agency is, on the third floor of a nondescript white-brick building. I pass by Craig’s office, a lawyer who’s been there for so long that I hardly notice him anymore, but something’s about to happen that’s going to bring him and me closer together and turn my life inside out, upside down. . .

“Good with Michaelson,” I say my boss Ed, who’s in his seat, facing the window as he always does. “Got the photos.”

Except he doesn’t say a word, and when I go to him, he’s slumped in his chair, clenching his left arm with his right hand. No pulse. Heart attack, most likely.

Oh, what a day.

And here’s the kicker: the morning after the funeral, I find out that I now own this agency. Thanks, Ed. I think. I hope.

Skin Deep is the first book in the NEW “Siobhan O’Brien” traditional mystery series, released July 21, 2020.

Korean-American adoptee Siobhan O’Brien has spent much of her life explaining her name and her family to strangers, but a 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 glazed donut than a romance, but when an old friend asks Siobhan to find her daughter who has disappeared from her dorm, the rookie private detective’s search begins at Llewellyn College.

A women’s institution of higher learning in upstate New York, Llewellyn, for the first time in its two-hundred-year history, has opened its doors to male students. Fringe group The Womyn of Llewellyn are furious, but their ex-fashion-model president declares they have little choice due to financial shortfalls. But if that’s true, where did she get the money to build a brand new science center, and why is it under 24/7 surveillance by the town cops?

As Siobhan delves deeper into the search for her friend’s daughter, she encounters politely dangerous men in white turtlenecks, vegan cooking that might kill her, possibly deadly yoga poses, and a woman named Cleopatra who’s got more issues than National Geographic.

This first in a new series introduces an endearing P.I. heroine in the tradition of classic female detectives like Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski readers won’t be able to put down.

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About the author
Sung J. Woo’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Guernica/PEN, and Vox. He has written two novels, Love Love (2015) and Everything Asian (2009), which won the 2010 Asian Pacific American Librarians Association Literature Award (Youth category). He lives in Washington, New Jersey. To learn more about Sung, visit his website at sungjwoo.com.

All comments are welcomed.