The Dead American

They steer a tight ship in squeaky-clean Singapore. No dissent, no opposition, no criticism. It’s like an entire country run by Walt Disney. Disneyland with the death penalty, somebody once called it.

A young American software engineer hangs himself in his Singapore apartment. At least that’s what the police say happened. Emma Lazar, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, thinks otherwise. She thinks Tyler Bartlett was murdered to keep him quiet about something and the Singapore police are covering it up.

Emma Lazar asks Inspector Samuel Tay to help her look into the young man’s death. Tay is a senior inspector in Singapore CID and clearly the best investigator the Singapore police have ever had, but he’s been suspended. Tay shot a man and everyone knows it was self-defense, but Tay is an outsider in tightly wound little Singapore and his enemies have seized on the incident to get rid of him once and for all.

Tay really doesn’t want to ask questions about the death of Tyler Bartlett. It certainly won’t help him get his job back to challenge the government’s official narrative, but something about Emma Lazar‘s determination tickles his curiosity and… well, the truth is he’s bored and she’s beautiful.

Learning that Tyler Bartlett’s death was no suicide is easy enough for Tay. What is far more difficult is finding out what it was the young man knew that made him worth killing.

When Tay discovers both his superiors on the police force and the faceless men of the Internal Security Department are working desperately behind the scenes to keep him from finding out, he becomes determined to uncover what, and who, is behind Tyler Bartlett’s murder.

Of course, there’s a problem there. If Tay does find out, won’t that make him worth killing, too?