It is pleasing to note that among the growing number of Asian-Americans producing works of fiction are authors who specialize in stories of crime and detection. Wisconsin-born Milton K. Ozaki (1913-89), credited as the first of these, published more than two dozen works set mostly in the U.S. Midwest. Living writers who have contributed to this genre include Dale Furutani — the first Asian-American to win a major mystery writing award — Laura Joh Rowland, Sujata Massey, Leonard Chang, Don Lee, Naomi Hirahara, Ed Lin, and the author of the work under review, Henry Chang.
Chang's two earlier works, "Chinatown Beat" and "Year of the Dog," combine the genres of police procedural and ethnic detective. While they conveyed life, and occasionally violent death, in New York's Chinatown in a convincing manner, Chang's series character, NYPD Detective Jack Yu, spent too much of his time wallowing in feelings of guilt and self-pity over his dysfunctional family situation.
In his third work, it seems Chang is finally getting it right. Jack Yu is doggedly focused on tracking down a femme fatale, a Chinese woman known only as Mona, who in a previous work killed her patron, a wealthy gang leader, and staged the crime to make another man appear guilty of the murder. She then fled New York for the West Coast with a small fortune in jewels she'd looted from her victim. The gang is determined to wreak vengeance on the woman, and it becomes a contest to see who will get to her first.