I would like to thank Netgalley and the author for a review copy of The Learning Curve of Pain, the second novel in the Mercenaries in Suits series featuring Chance Yang and his former boss, Felipe Kazama, set mostly in London in 2016.

Chance responds to a dying man’s request and goes to Spain to discover what happened to his sister years ago. Emma Milken apparently died of tuberculosis but her brother Lewis suspects some more nefarious. Back in London with answers he meets Nigel Weatherby of the Met, who is investigating what seems like an open and shut case of murder, but there are anomalies. Urged on by Felipe Kazama Chance goes undercover at the neighbours, a well to do couple with an adopted daughter who was once a child soldier.

I found The Learning Curve of Pain to be a compulsive read, even if I’m not quite sure why. It is a difficult novel to grab hold of as there is a lot of allusion and nebulousness, with Felipe offering a stream of consciousness monologue at every turn. He has a lot to say, throwing useless facts at every turn, but if you parse it, it is quite pointed and not far from my own thoughts, notably on Brexit.

The novel consists of two separate stories, the death of Emma Milken and after that the murder of Daniele, which takes up the majority of the novel. There is a vein of sick humour in this latter story and I thought it was really clever the way the author puts it together. Not that anything is totally spelled out, the reader has to infer so much.

The murder investigation hums along in the background for much of the novel as it is as much about the people as the crime. The novel spends a lot of time with Chance and his budding relationship with Catherine Roxburgh. He is obviously a smart man, based on his investigative skills, but he seems like a blank canvas in his relationship with Catherine in that he seems to exist to please her. Strange. Talking of strange, Felipe Kazama is the standout character in the novel. His mouth motors at 100mph minimum, but I think that is a front to cover his activities, where the mergers and acquisitions business he works in is rather different to the standard.

I will say that I got lost in all the references to The Remains of the Day as I haven’t read the novel or watched the film. I’m sure that there are inferences in the many discussions about it, but they all went over my head, so I found it fairly tedious.

The Learning Curve of Pain is a good read that I can recommend.

When part-time fixer Chance Yang is enlisted to investigate a pair of suspicious deaths, the trails lead him from the sunny shores of Spain to the posh boroughs of London. This is the second book in the series and much like the first, not much of a mystery. But also like the first, this is very well written but much more a character study than a mystery.