Despite some great action sequences, the story, as usual with Chang (Death Money, 2014, etc.), lacks both variety and...
Chang’s fifth novel is a turbo-charged requiem for a blood brotherhood rooted in an impossibly distant past.
Some people are lucky at cards, some lucky in love. Even though he’s waiting for his ladylove, attorney Alexandra Lee-Chow, to make her way through a messy divorce, Detective Jack Yu of the NYPD’s Fifth District is still lucky because none of the many criminals who’ve shot at him have killed him. But he can’t hold a candle to Tat “Lucky” Louie, the blood brother of his youth, who’s just emerged from an 88-day coma brought on by his own shooting. Everyone in Chinatown recognizes that the number 88 is especially lucky, and Jack would like nothing better than to shake Lucky’s hand, congratulate him on his return to life, and endorse his vow to avoid the kind of criminal behavior that brought him to death’s door. Instead, Lucky disappears shortly after Jack helps spirit him out of the hospital. Fueled less by greed than by a lust for face-saving revenge, Lucky gathers a new gang around him and plots a series of high-octane crimes against his old enemies, from Big Uncle Jo, a gang handler from the On Yee Merchants Association, to Woo Sik Kee, a longtime stalwart of the Wo Lok triad. Though Lucky’s improbable survival makes him feel immortal, Jack knows his latest carnival of crime can’t end well; if rival Chinatown gangsters don’t stop him, Jack’s outraged colleagues at the Fifth District will.
Despite some great action sequences, the story, as usual with Chang (Death Money, 2014, etc.), lacks both variety and surprise. What keeps you reading, along with the customary warts-and-all portrait of New York’s Chinatown, is the uncanny strength of the bond between the career cop and his doomed blood brother.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61695-784-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
With its shaky armchair psychology and excessive plot threads, this is a series low point.
A teenager with a troubled past becomes the prime suspect in a string of brutal murders, but ex–FBI profiler Pierce Quincy and his partner, Rainie Conner, think there’s more to the story.
For the past three years, Pierce and Rainie have fostered Sharlah Nash, now 13, with the hope of soon adopting her. Sharlah’s childhood is the epitome of troubled: when she was 5, her drug-addict father killed her mother and then tried to kill her and her older brother, Telly, but Telly, then 9, bashed his head in with a baseball bat. The siblings were fostered apart, with Sharlah ending up with Pierce and Rainie, whose expertise as parents seems to come from their combined resumes as a former criminal profiler and cop, respectively. Telly, we learn in expansive flashbacks from the now-teenager’s point of view (Sharlah has her own, crowding an already packed narrative), bounced around before landing, age 17, with Frank and Sandra Duvall, a kind couple who are obviously not what they seem. In what appears to be an explosion of unexplained rage, Telly allegedly murders the Duvalls and then kills two people in a gas station before heading off into the Oregon woods, sparking a manhunt and fears that he’s coming after Sharlah. Pierce and Rainie (last seen in Say Goodbye, 2008) work with local law enforcement to build a psychological profile of the teen—which is questionable given the excessive amount of guesswork and second- and thirdhand information used—while trying to protect their daughter from harm.
With its shaky armchair psychology and excessive plot threads, this is a series low point.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-525-95458-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2017
Of the three intertwined plots, the Francoeur scheme is the deadliest, and the Ouellet saga will remind readers of the...
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is pushed toward retirement.
It’s a great relief for Inspector Gamache to get out of the office and head for Three Pines to help therapist-turned-bookseller Myrna find out why her friend Constance Pineault didn’t turn up for Christmas. Except for Isabelle Lacoste, Gamache’s staff has been gutted by Chief Superintendent Francoeur. Gamache’s decisions have been mostly ignored and bets placed on how soon he’ll admit redundancy and retire. Even worse, a recent tragedy (The Beautiful Mystery, 2012, etc.) has led his second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, to transfer out of Gamache’s department, fall sway to prescription drugs and hold his former boss in contempt. En route to Three Pines, Gamache happens upon a fatality at the Champlain Bridge and agrees to handle the details. But this case takes a back seat to the disappearance of Constance when she turns up dead in her home. Myrna confides Constance’s secret: As the last surviving Ouellet quintuplet, she’d spent her adult years craving privacy after the national publicity surrounding the birth of the five sisters had turned them into daily newspaper fodder. Why would anyone want to murder this reclusive woman of 79? The answer is developed through clues worthy of Agatha Christie that Gamache interprets while dealing with the dismemberment of his homicide department by Francoeur, who’s been plotting a major insult to Canadian government for 30 years. Matters come to a head when Gamache and the one Sûreté chief still loyal to him and her husband, a computer whiz, are tracked to Three Pines, where Beauvoir awaits, gun in hand.
Of the three intertwined plots, the Francoeur scheme is the deadliest, and the Ouellet saga will remind readers of the real-life Dionne family debacle of the 1940s. But it’s Three Pines, with its quirky tenants, resident duck and luminous insights into trust and friendship, that will hook readers and keep them hooked.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-312-65547-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
BOOK TO SCREEN
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