Book Review - "Waking Up"

Waking Up

Joe Traum
416 Pages

"When his 11-year-old son is kidnapped and murdered, a distraught Michael Hayes faces the potential end of his family and his booming business, Eagle Realty. The police fail to find the killer, leading Hayes and his Eagle colleague, Soo-Mee Yeong, to embark on their own investigation. Enlisting the aid of an old friend who has his own ties to the criminal underground, the duo focus on a Japanese mobster who, when attempting to launder money, suffered substantial losses in an Eagle real estate transaction managed by Hayes. The search leads Hayes and Yeong through the shadow world of drug smuggling and duplicitous real estate deals in America and Japan. Will they find the killer and bring him to justice? Joe Traum brings memorable characters, colorful locales, and a page-turning plot to this fascinating thriller."

The book originally came on my radar as the monthly pick for a book club I was joining in on.  My partner in crime when it comes to books found out about the club and that the author was actually going to be at the meeting as well since he was from the local area.  Unfortunatley, the meeting didn't turn out to be a discussion about the plot of the book, instead the author stood up front and talked to us for an hour about his journey into publishing and minor bits about how he came up with ideas for the book.  Interesting topics, but not what I was attending for.  Still, all in all, not an overall bad experience.

The book is ok, especially for this being his first novel, but defintiely not on par with the books I am used to reading.  The murder/kidnapping plot was cookie cutter and similar to other books already published.  The author did attempt to throw in a few curve balls but didn't quite hit them out of the park.  The other half of the plot is about the main character, Michael Hayes, career in real estate investment.  I did learn a bit about the field, but there was too much focus on it.  I wanted more of the suspense part not a real estate education.  The author did say that he was more interested in the real estate side so his goals were accomplished.  If you are used to reading suspence novels, then the ending is not really shocking, but give it a shot, who knows!

The author's next undertaking is a book about two brothers that get seperated at a concentration camp as babies, but end up years later working as partners on a real estate deal without knowing the truth.  Seems intriguing enough if done right.