BLACK KARMA

Taking people at their word puts a souxun, a people finder, at risk.

Bai Jiang is a beautiful, wealthy Chinese woman with a penchant for lost causes. When Inspector Kelly of the San Francisco City Police Department approaches her and her partner, Lee, for help in finding Daniel Chen, who Kelly claims was involved in a huge drug bust gone wrong, she reluctantly acquiesces. Since she has relatives high in the triad, Bai thinks it will be easy to find the trail of the missing China White heroin and $1 million in cash. But Jason, the father of her 13-year-old daughter, Dan, and a triad enforcer, informs her that the heroin was Mexican brown and the people involved were members of the Norteños gang. When Bai, learning that Chen is a college professor, pays a visit to his office, she turns up two dead Norteños. At Chen’s house, Bai and Lee find Wen Liu, a buyer and seller of confidential information. They follow her to a hotel, where she too is murdered. Jason’s mother, Elizabeth, who acts as Bai’s mother figure, is so eager to marry Bai off that she sets her up with Howard Kwan, whom Bai instantly dislikes. Though the Kwans are fabulously wealthy, none of their three sons are equal to the task of running the empire. Instead, Howard’s mother thinks the tough-minded Bai, a woman who never gives up, would be a perfect fit. Jason, who still loves and protects Bai, thinks otherwise.

Bai’s second appearance (White Ginger, 2013) provides nonstop action and characters you care about despite their dubious lifestyles.