A well-told, panoramic international true-crime adventure.
Expanding on his intriguing New Yorker article, Keefe (Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping, 2005) tells the story of a multimillion-dollar smuggling ring that ferried illegal immigrants from China to New York City in the 1980s and early ’90s.
The ringleader, or “snakehead,” was a legal immigrant named Cheng Chui Ping, known to everyone in her Chinatown neighborhood as “Sister Ping.” Ping ran her operation, one of the largest and most sophisticated of its kind in the world, from a storefront on Chinatown’s Hester Street beginning in 1982. During the next decade, she raked in millions of dollars from poor Chinese desperate to get to America; each paid thousands of dollars to be smuggled in. Ping collaborated with the violent Chinatown gang Fuk Ching, an arrangement that would eventually lead to her downfall. On a June night in 1993, two Fuk Ching members were the victims of a revenge killing by a rival gang—the same day they were supposed to offload a ship of Chinese “customers.” With no one to meet it, the Golden Venture ran aground in Queens; ten people were killed, and many more were injured and arrested by police. In the wake of the tragedy, authorities tracked Ping, but it took years before she was finally captured in Hong Kong in 2000. Keefe ably navigates this extremely complex story, interviewing people at all levels, including law enforcement officials and—via written questions and answers—the imprisoned Sister Ping. Most effective are the author’s interviews with the illegal Chinese immigrants, who explain their willingness to pay a fortune—and risk their lives on a dangerous journey—just for the chance to reach America.
A well-told, panoramic international true-crime adventure.Pub Date: July 21, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52130-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
Harris still has plenty to learn, but he provides an informative study of why the millennial generation faces more struggles...
A millennial writer talks about the coming crises his generation will face.
Millennials—defined by the author as those born between 1980 and 2000—have been sold on the idea that if they work hard in school, forfeiting play and creative time for work and sports, and go on to a four-year college, where they continue to work hard, then a solid, well-paying job awaits them once they graduate. But as Harris (b. 1988), an editor at New Inquiry, points out, many in that age group have discovered there is no pot of gold at the end of that particular rainbow. In today’s competitive economy, he writes, “young households trail further behind in wealth than ever before, and while a small number of hotshot finance pros and app developers rake in big bucks…wages have stagnated and unemployment increased for the rest.” Those who manage to attend college are often burdened by high student-loan debts, forcing them to work any job they can to pay the bills. Athletes who attend college on a sports scholarship pay with the physical wear and tear on their bodies and the stress of high-stakes games alongside a full academic schedule. Harris also evaluates how millennials interact with social media (a topic that could warrant an entire book on its own), which creates a never-ending link to nearly everything every day, never giving anyone a chance to unwind. Professional musicians, actors, and other performing artists face strong competition in a world where anyone can upload a video to YouTube, so those with genuine talent have to work that much harder for recognition. After his intense analysis of this consumer-based downward spiral, the author provides several possible remedies that might ease the situation—but only if millennials step forward now and begin the process of change.
Harris still has plenty to learn, but he provides an informative study of why the millennial generation faces more struggles than expected, despite the hard work they’ve invested in moving ahead.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-51086-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This exacting book adds a cogent historical investigation to the relatively few intelligent books about the father of all serial killers. Sensationalistic distortion and overimaginative theorizing have been part of this anonymous criminal's history since the first contemporaneous tabloid stories on the Whitechapel murders and continue in the inquiries of modern ``Ripperologists.'' For example, the letter signed ``Yours truly, Jack the Ripper'' that christened the legend was probably a journalist's headline-grabbing forgery, perpetuated in more hoax letters from the Ripper-crazed public. British historian Sugden corrects such myths and errors with donnish competitiveness, spending only a little time dispatching the more bizarre hypotheses (such as the recent Ripper diary hoax, the fanciful implication of the royal family in the murders, and the innumerable post-Victorian pseudo-suspects). Avoiding the penny-dreadful archives of Ripperology, he diligently approaches the voluminous police work and forensic evidence on the ``canonical'' four victims, all prostitutes, and an equal number of possible ones. Drawing on previous research and his own, he reexamines the eyewitnesses' testimony, inquest reports, newspaper accounts, and police leads (and red herrings). Although the material is still compelling and timely after a century, Sugden's sometimes sluggish prose and narrative do not bring to life the panicked atmosphere of the East End or the tensions within the police department. In the end, though many inconsistencies are swept away and many ambiguities left warily intact, Sugden produces an approximate modus operandi around which a convincing psychological profile can be constructed. His examination of suspects exonerates previous favorites, such as Michael Ostrog, whom Assistant Chief Constable Melville Macnaghten called a ``mad Russian doctor''; but with even his preferred suspect, a Polish con man and poisoner, he reaches the verdict ``not proven.'' Sugden's factual treatment of the murders provides a meticulous and reasoned profile for readers and future detectives. (Photos and maps, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1994
ISBN: 0-7867-0124-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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