Year of the Dog: Henry Chang

Year of the Dog by Henry Chang is the 2nd of four books featuring American-born Jack Yu, who is one of only a few Chinese officers in the NYPD. In the first book in the series, Chinatown Beat, Jack Yu is assigned to the Chinatown precinct. In this book, he has been transferred to another precinct,which he prefers because he has too many personal ties in Chinatown. But, with his background, he ends up getting involved with cases in Chinatown anyway.

Jack works many of the standard holidays, whether because he is new to the precinct or he doesn't normally celebrate them. The action begins on Thanksgiving Day in 1994 (the Year of the Dog in the Chinese zodiac). Jack watches the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on a TV at a Korean deli as he sips his bowl of chowder. The novel ends on the first day of the Year of the Pig (January 31, 1995), as Jack attends the Chinese New Year parade.

I liked this book a lot. At the end I noticed that it was very unlike most novels I read. It was more a loosely connected set of stories, mostly centered around the criminal element in Chinatown. There is not any overall crime that is investigated throughout the book. This worked for me, but some readers might come away disappointed.

This paragraph from the book jacket flap describes it well:

In this vivid evocation, Chang shows us the people he understands so well:  a Chinese yuppie whose loss of face ends in tragedy;  an ailing bookie with romance in his soul;  a would-be gang leader and the tough new immigrants from Fukien who confront him;  and the triad official, Grass Sandal, sent from Hong Kong to liase with local benevolent societies. Year of the Dog shows us what exists beneath the surface of the tourists' Chinatown.

This book has strong elements of the noir genre, but I don't see it as totally noir. Most of the story is about the criminal underbelly of New York's Chinatown, but Jack, the main character is ethical, with a strong moral code. There is a story of a secondary character that ends well. I was rooting for that character from the moment she was introduced.

Another favorite character was Police Officer Wong, "a rookie patrolman, a Chinese-American portable who could speak several Chinese dialects." Wong pulls Jack into a missing person case on Christmas Eve.

I will admit to having trouble keeping track of the various criminal characters with similar (to me) Chinese names. There were scenes of graphic violence and sex that could be objectionable to some readers. I did not consider these major flaws, and I will be continuing to read the next two novels in this series. My husband has copies of the whole series, so that will be easy.


I also plan to follow up on reading two novels by Ed Lin set in Chinatown in the 1970's, which I purchased a couple of years ago. Another series I have read set in New York's Chinatown is the Bill Smith/Lydia Chin novels by S. J. Rozan. Those are set in the 1990's to present day. I reviewed the last novel in the series, Ghost Hero, here.

This year, Chinese New Year - The Year of the Monkey - begins on February 8th and lasts until Jan 27th, 2017. I was motivated to read Year of the Dog (at this time) because I saw last year's Chinese New Year Crime Fiction post at Mystery Fanfare. This year's list of crime fiction that takes place during the Chinese New Year is HERE.

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Publisher:   Soho Press, 2008 
Length:       231 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Jack Yu #2
Setting:      New York, Chinatown
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      Borrowed from my husband.