THE UMBRELLA MAN

By: Jake Needham

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The first bomb cracked the Hilton like an egg. The second gutted the lobby of the Marriott. And the third peeled the front off the Grand Hyatt. All American hotels. All destroyed. Hundreds are dead and thousands are injured.

Singapore is bleeding.

Inspector Samuel Tay is a senior inspector in Singapore CID, but he is frozen out of the investigation from the beginning. He has some serious enemies in Singapore’s Internal Security Department and he has even more enemies at the American embassy, so Tay is assigned routine cases while his colleagues join with the CIA and the FBI in a feverish search for the bombers.

Three days after the explosions, the smell of death still sticky in the city’s air, Tay is sent to a run-down apartment near the Malaysian border where two children have found the body of a Caucasian male with a broken neck. Tay feels an immediate connection with the dead man, although he’s certain he’s never seen him before.

As Tay searches the dead man’s past for clues to who he was and who his killer might be, Tay’s own past begins to give up its secrets. Then his long-dead father, a man he can barely remember, reaches out of the grave to point Tay to the truth about both the murdered man and the bombings.

That’s when the horror of Singapore’s destruction becomes a personal horror for Samuel Tay.

“JAKE NEEDHAM DEFTLY MORPHS 1930s SAM SPADE INTO INSPECTOR SAMUEL TAY, A WORLD-WEARY 21st CENTURY SINGAPORE HOMICIDE DETECTIVE” - Libris Reviews

likeable character

I love learning about Singapore and I enjoy Sam Te's quiet morality. the book is witty and well written and the virtual voice is surprisingly suited to the wiring..

TERRIFIC MYSTERY

I love Jake's writing. His portrayal of Inspector Tay. Hes serious but also he's fun to know personally. I love the way Tay thinks! This story was a complicated crime novel written by a master storyteller! 5 stars Jake!

Virtual Voice is truly pitiful. Destroys story.

Very good story and characters, ruined by pitiful AI narrator. Every iteration of this VV mess is worse than the last.