In Tokyo, Wudda, a 47 year-old widow, is a plain, childless PA for an older, single male detective, Kodaka. She knows English. A woman comes in asking them to find out if her father's suicide when she was 5 was really a murder. Her father had been working with a young translator, Peter. Wudda is setting off for London to investigate when her boss is killed.
She plans a meeting in London with Martin Caldwell, who doesn't turn up. She goes to his Exeter flat, gets inside. She sees references in Japanese to Sarin (her husband had been killed in an incident involving it). The phone goes. She picks it up. It's someone called Nick, wondering where Caldwell is. She's attacked. The man (Japanese) leaves with laptop and papers. She has a memory stick. She wakes in a hospital to find a man waiting. Holgate was a journalist in the old days. He knew there'd been a secret government lab near the place where a drowning happened. Returning to London, she discovers that her hotel room has been broken into. She finds out that Caldwell was in Iceland when he should have been seeing her.
Nick, an art teacher living in London, is married to Kate. His mother Cara died not longer before. He's never met his father Jeff. He was brought up by Cara and April. The 2 women as students had shared a house with Peter and Alison (who died at sea, though Peter's body was never found), Caldwell, Jeff, and Melissa (who became an MP). Caldwell phones him, asking to meet. He fails to turn up. Nick talks to Melissa. He sees a japanese man leave her house. She gives him an invitation to an auction in Iceland. He's learned that Peter, not Jeff, is his father. He goes to the Exeter flat, meets the journalist that Wudda met. He says that on the night of the drowning, a guard died at the lab (Sarin might have been there).
Wudda visits her brother in New York. She flies to Reykjavik. A shady company with offices in Japan have an office in Iceland. She finds files there, with map references. While investigating, "The Irishman" who attacked her in Exeter kills a person she met. She runs him over in self-defence. She encounters Martin Caldwell who keeps her handcuffed because in 3 days a big deal is going through. He's working for Peter, to do with a company called Cortezone. He's launching a company called Emergence. She talks him into releasing her. She calls for help. A thug arrives, then another to save her. When Nick gets there, the farmhouse has burnt down. 4 corpses - one of them Caldwell.
When Nick goes to the auction he's given a plane ticket to leave the next day, for his own safety. Peter knows what's been going on.
Wudda makes for Cambridge to find an academic involved with Emergence. She's a climate predictor. The plots of Scandanavian land that Emergence are auctioning will be prime land when global warning hits hard, but Emergence have falsely extended the safe areas. She complains. Nick and the lecturer are kidnapped and taken to the same place.
Wudda meets Peter in Ely. He's been tracking her. He tells her about the drowning event. Peter's been swindling his boss via the Emergence company. The boss (who was behind the Sarin episode that killed Wudda's husband) has found out and is holding Nick and the lecturer. He will return the captives if Peter resolves the money issue. Peter asks her to represent him in a face-to-face deal with his boss in London. They agree that Peter and the boss will meet on the beach where the drowning happened. Peter invites Wudda to watch from a headline. A bomb explodes on the beach. Peter and the boss die. Everyone else escapes. At the end of the novel, some weeks later, Nick has news that Peter might be alive, a terminally ill man having taken his place on the beach.
Very plotty, but it's snappy. I like how the main characters, Wudda and Nick, don't meet until the end of chapter 29 (of 31), and how Peter disappears yet again - a new life where his first was supposed to have ended. Wudda's concept of behaving correctly is about the only theme developed.
"Holgate visibly winced" isn't ideal.
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