Tim Cauling, Amateur PI Series, Book I

Eighteen-year-old Tim Cauling is a struggling busser at the Truck Stop Diner when his deceased dad's best friend offers him a job as an assistant PI. After finding his footing on a fraud case, he must help his mentor get Toyota's first foreign female executive out of a Japanese prison or watch her lose her daughter.  

Tim helps track down the main suspects in the bustling city of Tokyo. But navigating the complexities of Japanese culture might prove insurmountable to catching the real culprit lurking in corporate shadows. Either way, Tim is forced to come to terms with his own relationship to his father, who died unforgiven.