Who the Hell is Harry Black?

TWO PEOPLE ARE WORKING THE CASE.

ONE OF THEM HAS BEEN DEAD FOR A DECADE.

For over thirty years, a man named Harry Black lived quietly in a small town on the Gulf of Thailand. Then, while walking on the beach on his eighty-sixth birthday, he's shot and killed by a sniper firing from half a mile away.

Why would someone send a highly skilled sniper to kill an insignificant old man? Maybe he wasn't really as insignificant as everybody thought he was.

Inspector Samuel Tay was once Singapore's best-known homicide detective, but he's no longer a cop. He was too much of a maverick for straight-and-narrow little Singapore and his bosses forced him into an early retirement. When a guy who once did Tay a big favor asks him to look into Harry Black's murder, it's his chance to get back in the game.

Tay's mother wants to help. Tay has always had a somewhat fraught relationship with his mother, but he figures they get along pretty well now, particularly considering she's dead. Tay doesn't believe in ghosts, of course, and when his mother shows up in the dark of night to give him advice about his cases, he knows perfectly well that her appearances aren't real.

But here's the thing. Some of her advice is so good he can't help but listen to it anyway.

This time, Tay's mother warns him he's fishing in dangerous waters. 'I'll help you, Samuel,' she tells him, 'but you are about to expose secrets that will change the way people see the world. No one is ever going to thank you for what you’re doing.'

That sounds pretty overwrought to Tay, and besides, his mother isn't really there, so why should he believe her?

Harry Black was just an old man who lived in complete obscurity for the last thirty years of his life. What secrets could he possibly have known that were so important somebody might have murdered him to keep them hidden?

But that also raises a really awkward question Samuel Tay needs to think about.

If he discovers the secrets someone killed Harry Black to bury, why wouldn’t they kill Tay to silence him, too?