MURDER IN CHINA RED

After pretty Judy Fisher thumbs through her sleeping john’s credit cards, she heads for the shower—and steps out to find there are two more guests, uninvited and armed, in Room 1204 of the toney Palace Hotel. Three bullets later, the john is dead and so is she, and Manhattan Chief of Detectives Joseph Abrams is on the case—but not without misgivings. Once upon a time, Abrams’s daughter Mary Anne caught Judy in bed with her husband, Liu Chiang-hsin, a moment that immediately preceded his demotion to Abrams’s ex-son-in-law. Now Abrams warns the Beijing-born, Mao-traumatized “Chinaman” Liu, a New York p.i., off the case, but instead of listening, he blankets barmen, bellboys, and druggie snitches with $20 bills and even calls an old buddy, CIA veteran Sam Richards, for leads. Was the john a German munitions expert? Was the Mossad engaging in a little wet work? Was Judy simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? Drugs, arms, arm-twistings, and heavy-handed attempts at misdirection will all play a part before Liu straightens everything out in a climactic shoot-’em-up at a Brooklyn warehouse.

Asian specialist Barrett, who has used Bangkok, Hong Kong, Thailand and 1862 China as settings for earlier novels (none reviewed), knows his way around .357 magnums, 12-gauge short-barreled shotguns with pistol grips, 5-shot Smith & Wessons, and all the rest of the light artillery. But despite repeated flashbacks to scenes of his hero’s Beijing torture, is as flimsy as the paper target in a shooting gallery.