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
A quadriplegic criminalist hunts the most elusive quarry of his career: a serial killer who leaves clues at each crime scene allowing the cops to head off the next murder—if they can decode them in time. With nothing left to live for since an accident ended his forensic career and his marriage, bearish Lincoln Rhyme has made an appointment with Dr. William Berger, of the suicide-friendly Lethe Society. But Rhyme's old NYPD colleague, Det. Lon Sellitto, just happens to breeze in, uninvited and unwelcome, minutes before Berger does, and talks Rhyme out of suicide and into spearheading the hunt for Unsub 823, the demonic cabbie whose fares often face nightmarish scenarios of torture and death. Though he shows no mercy to his victims, Unsub 823 obligingly salts each crime scene with cryptic clues to his next, clues that whet Rhyme's jaundiced appetite and give him the hope of saving currency trader T.J. Colfax, German emigrÇe Monelle Gerger, elderly William Everett, and widowed Carole Ganz and her daughter. It's not long before Rhyme's blood is pumping again, and he's persuaded beautiful Amelia Sachs, the Major Crimes officer who preserved the first crime scene long enough to gather a few precious scraps of evidence, to put off her medical transfer to Public Affairs and become his eyes, ears, and nose at each gory scene. Working feverishly against a series of impossible deadlines, Sachs and Rhyme piece together a profile of the perp's appearance, his lodgings, his car, his habits, and the idÇe fixe that drives him: He believes he's the Bone Collector, a demented ghoul who preyed on New York's dead and near-dead at the turn of the century, determined to free his victims from this mortal coil by stripping them to ageless bone. Deaver (A Maiden's Grave, 1995, etc.) marries forensic work that would do Patricia Cornwell proud to a turbocharged plot that puts Benzedrine to shame. (First printing of 100,000; film rights to Universal; $100,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-670-86871-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1996
BOOK TO SCREEN
The welcome return of an existential detective.
Jackson Brodie is back.
This is Atkinson’s fifth Jackson Brodie novel (Started Early, Took My Dog, 2011, etc.), but fans know that the phrase “Jackson Brodie novel” is somewhat deceptive. Yes, he is the hero in that he is a private investigator—former cop, military veteran—who solves (usually) mysteries. But he is not so much the central character as the grumpy, anxious, largehearted gravitational field that attracts a motley assortment of lost souls and love interests. In this latest outing, Jackson is a half-duty parent to his teenage son while the boy’s mother, an actor, finishes her run on a detective series. Vince Ives is a more-or-less successful middle-class husband and father until his wife leaves him, his boss makes him redundant, and he becomes a murder suspect. Crystal Holroyd—not her real name—has built a brilliant new life for herself, but someone from her past is threatening her daughter. Both Vince and Crystal seek help from Jackson, with varying results. Meanwhile, Jackson’s protégée, Reggie Chase, has risen through the ranks in the police force and is taking a fresh look at an old case. That these stories intertwine is a given. “A coincidence is just an explanation waiting to happen” is one of Jackson’s maxims; it could also serve as an ironic epigram for Atkinson’s approach to the mystery genre. A small cast of characters collides and careens in a manner that straddles Greek tragedy and screwball comedy. The humor is sly rather than slapstick, and Atkinson is keenly interested in inner lives and motivations. There are villains, certainly—human trafficking and the sexual abuse of children figure prominently here—but even the sympathetic characters are complicated and compromised. Jackson has a strong moral code, but his behavior is often less than ethical. The same is true of Vince, Crystal, and Reggie. The deaths and disappearances that Jackson investigates change with every book, but the human heart remains the central mystery.
The welcome return of an existential detective.Pub Date: June 25, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-52309-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2019
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