Sung J. Woo (Love, Love) is one of those agile writers able seamlessly to insert detailed backstories mid-series: reading his second Siobhan O'Brien mystery, Deep Roots, without benefit of the inaugural Skin Deep is no less absorbing.
Siobhan runs the detective agency she inherited when her boss died suddenly. She's hired college student Beaker as her intern--and just in time, because she needs someone to check her e-mail while her new assignment takes her to a private island in the Pacific Northwest. Billionaire Philip Ahn has summoned her to Woodford, his expansive family mansion, to figure out if his youngest child, Duke, is truly his son. Octogenarian Ahn is a genius, specializing in artificial intelligence. But even his most advanced devices--personal drones, biometric apps--can't (or won't?) prove (or disprove) Duke is an imposter.
Siobhan arrives to find a surreal level of luxury. Employees ensure her every comfort, even dressing her for family meals, which entails exquisite, fit-to-the-skin clothing laid out on her most-comfortable-ever bed. She'll need to be suitably costumed to meet the entire Ahn clan: two ex-wives, the current wife, their assorted progeny. And then figure out how to escape their gilded prison.
Identity--and what makes a family--remains at the heart of Woo's series: Is Duke Duke?; the Ahns' overtly wannabe Eurocentric royal posturing (despite their ancestry traced to a 16th-century Korean admiral); Siobhan herself is Korean, adopted by a European couple; even Beaker, with his insights on "code switching." Clever, biting, and page-turning, Woo's PI series surely deserves future developments. --Terry Hong, BookDragon