Year of the Dog (A Detective Jack Yu Investigation) - Hardcover

Chang, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569475156 ISBN 13: 9781569475157

Publisher: Soho Crime, 2008

Synopsis

He’s been transferred to a different precinct, but Detective Jack Yu cannot get away from Chinatown’s criminals—his old friends—who have hooked up with the Hong Kong-based triads in an elaborate nationwide credit card fraud. He also cannot escape the Chinese victims whose stories cry out for justice, like the teenage Chinese take-out delivery boy brutally murdered in the projects.

About this title

About the Author

Henry Chang was born and raised in New York City's Chinatown where he now lives. He is a graduate of CCNY and is currently a Security Director. He is the author of CHINATOWN BEAT, the first mystery in the Detective Jack Yu series.

Reviews

Less a conventional mystery than a study in Chinese-American culture, Chang's second novel (after 2006's Chinatown Beat) offers another tantalizing glimpse of precinct and street life in Manhattan's Chinatown. When a prosperous family of four dies in their apartment, NYPD Det. Jack Yu determines it is murder/suicide, probably an effort to save face. Saving face, a powerful motivator in Chinese culture, drives many characters, including Yu's boyhood friend, now gang boss, Tat Lucky Louie; young turk Koo Jai, who's trying to pull one over on Lucky; and Sai Go, a dying smalltime bookie who wants to keep his dignity. DA Alexandra Lee-Chow, in contrast, embodies the struggles of ordinary Chinese-Americans who are neither crooks nor celebrities. While some may feel there are too many specifics about Chinese takeout meals and the finale is a bit of a copout, Chang deftly keeps the action moving as he brings the Chinatown neighborhood alive in all its guises. (Nov.)
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In mid-1990s, NYPD detective Jack Yu is assigned to a new precinct after being wounded in the line of duty, but he is still the go-to guy for all things Chinese. That’s how he picks up the murder-suicide of an upper-middle-class Chinese family whose father asphyxiated his family via carbon monoxide poisoning. The case winds back through a holiday season credit-card scam operated by one of the Chinese gangs and designed to leave real families saddled with debt for stolen merchandise. Yu also apprehends the murderers of a young Chinese delivery boy who was killed so the perps could buy new sneakers. In the midst of the chaos and heartbreak are parallel story lines of gang power struggles and a terminally ill bookie, who may be in love for the first time. The backdrop for it all is a holiday-season New York ravaged by winter storms but still somehow surprisingly vibrant. This is a dense, moody, and intelligent glimpse at Chinese life in New York as seen through the world-weary eyes of a young man with a foot firmly planted in two cultures. --Wes Lukowsky

Edition details

• Publisher: Soho Crime
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1569475156
• ISBN 13: 9781569475157
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240