Bookshelf Traveling for Insane Times No. 12

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme, hosted by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness.

This week I am returning to my husband's bookshelves in the glass-front bookcase. This image shows two series that he reads. If you click on the image of the shelf, you will be able to read more of the titles.

Starting from the left...
The Jack Yu series by Henry Chang:

This series features 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 the second 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.

See my reviews of Chinatown Beat and Year of the Dog.

Those are the only two books I have read in the series. My husband has read all five books.

Here is Glen's review of the 4th book, Death Money at Goodreads:

It's been a few years since Henry Chang has published a NYPD Detective Jack Yu procedural and this, the 4th, is a welcome return. Here, Yu is assigned (seemingly based on ethnicity alone) to investigate the death of an unidentified young Asian man found in the Harlem River. Just like a solo private eye (this book reads like a noirish private eye thriller), Yu is basically on his own (he has no partner and calls on only minimal police assistance) as he searches for the identities of killer and victim. There's no pyrotechnics or strong action here, just methodical, well-plotted police work with strong characters (especially Billy - Yu's good friend, tofu shop owner. and sort of loose cannon).

The series on the right is Parnell Hall's Stanley Hastings series. Glen has two reviews on Goodreads that give a good picture of the series so I am including those:

Glen's review of Murder, #2 in the series, at Goodreads:

This second volume in Parnell Hall's Stanley Hastings detective series is every bit as good as the stellar original. With a witty, self-deprecating protagonist (who, amazingly, has a home life and is personally undamaged) and an intricate clockwork plot (although the ending does feel a bit rushed) you really can't ask for a more entertaining read. Since I came late to this long-running series I anticipate more reading pleasure ahead.

Glen's review of Favor, #3 in the series at Goodreads:

Stanley Hastings is a lowly-paid leg man for an ambulance chasing lawyer, a wannabe sort of private eye and writer, a self-deprecating and loving family man. In this, the third of Parnell Hall's series, we find Stanley off to Atlantic City to do a quick favor for someone who's not really even a friend. Before too long, he finds himself charged with grand larceny (the way he tries to get out of that is elegant) and in the frame for two murders. The characters are all sharply drawn, the pace is swift, the plot is complex in a good way, and there is a light tone throughout. There are nearly 20 in the series and I can't wait to get to the next one.

My husband has read eight of the twenty books in the series and liked them all. I have only read the first one and I should read the second one soon.

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.

C is for Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang

Today I am featuring Chinatown Beat (2006) by Henry Chang for my submission for the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme. My theme for the meme this year is mysteries that feature policemen as the main character.

Introduction from the book flap:

Detective Jack Yu grew up in Chinatown. Some of his friends are criminals now; some are dead. Jack has just been transferred to his old neighborhood, where 99 percent of the cops are white. Unlike the others, confused by the residents who speak another language even when they’re speaking English, Jack knows what’s going on.

The Setting and the Detective:

New York City, Chinatown, 1994. Jack's father has just died and he is relatively new to a posting in Chinatown. He is adjusting to his father's death as he investigates two crimes in Chinatown.

This is the story of an outsider. Quoting from the book:

Of the twenty-eight thousand, eight hundred and sixty-nine officers in the New York City Police Department, Jack Yu was the eighty-eighth cop of Chinese-American heritage. A lucky number, he once thought. At a sinewy five-foot-ten, he'd have failed the height requirement of a decade earlier. Now, four years into his career, he'd been transferred to Chinatown, back into his old neighborhood, a detective second grade. 

After four months here he realized that working in the 0-Five was like living in two worlds at the same time. In a precinct that was ninety-nine percent yellow, the Commanding Officer was named Salvatore Marino, and the beat cops were ninety-nine percent white. The white cops put in their shifts, then beat a quick retreat back to the welcome of white enclaves beyond the colored reaches of the inner city. Chinatown was like a foreign port to them, full of experiences confounding to the average Caucasian mind. Don't worry about it, Jake, its Chinatown. They were able to dismiss it as a troublesome nightmare, half-remembered and unfathomable. These Chinese were creatures unlike themselves, existing in a world where the English language and white culture carried little significance. Generations of sons and daughters of the Celestial Kingdom, they lived their lives by their own set of odd cultural rules. When a crime was committed, no one ever saw or heard anything. When the cops rousted them, it was a Chinese fire drill. 

But Jack had grown up in Chinatown, knew what it felt like to look and breathe Chinese, to savor foo yee, ga lei, pungent and spicy aromas that white precinct cops wrinkled up their noses at, to speak and decipher regional dialects that sounded to the others like a back-alley cockfight.

Even in the community, Detective Jack Yu doesn't fit in because he represents the law and a police force that no one trusts. In his personal life, he carries baggage from his poor relationship with his father. His father was disappointed when Jack became a cop, and when Jack moved out of Chinatown.

One of the crimes being investigated involves Uncle Four, a member of the Hong Kong-based Red Circle Triad, and his beautiful young mistress, Mona, imported from Hong Kong. This plotline is compelling and  overshadows the other elements of the book.

My take:

I wondered how true this picture of Chinatown in the 1990's was, because we are only seeing the underbelly of the community. The crime, the violence, the hopelessness that many experience. I could not help but compare this book to the series by S. J. Rozan, starring Lydia Chin, a resident of Chinatown, and her sometimes partner, Bill Smith. The picture of Chinatown in Rozan's books is not so dark. The first Lydia Chin book was published in 1994, the same year as Chinatown Beat takes place.

However, Henry Chang was born and raised in Chinatown, and he is speaking from personal experience, which would make this book a valid picture of the time and the place. See this interview with the author at the New York Times site.

As I read this book, I had mixed reactions. I was coming into it expecting a police procedural, and it was more of a character study and an examination of Chinatown culture. As a novel, I liked it a lot. As a mystery, it was lacking. Still, my overall reaction is a positive one.

My recommendation is dual. If you want a straight mystery and a definite resolution, this may not be for you. If you are open to a crime novel with a different approach, this is a very good one.

Please visit the post at Mysteries in Paradise to check out other entries for this letter.


Other reviews of this book are at: Petrona and January Magazine. The review at January Magazine is very detailed, so you might not want to read it until after you read the book.