eBook, 220 pages

English language

Published Nov. 1, 2007 by Soho Crime.

ISBN:
978-1-56947-684-0
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
758845440
Goodreads:
12843979

View on OpenLibrary

(1 review)

Detective Jack Yu is assigned to the Chinatown precinct as the only officer of Chinese descent. He investigates a series of attacks on children and a missing mistress, shifting between the world of street thugs and gangs and the Chinatown of the rich and powerful.

When Detective Jack Yu is transferred to New York’s Chinatown, he isn’t ready to face the changes in his old neighborhood. His childhood friends are now hardened gangsters, his father is dying, and he is constantly reminded of this teenage blood brother, murdered in front of him years before.

Then community leader and tong boss Uncle Four is gunned down and his mistress goes missing. But unlike the rest of the culturally clueless police department, Jack knows his district’s gritty secrets. He will have to draw on his knowledge in order to catch this killer in a crime-ridden precinct where brotherhoods are just as likely …

6 editions

reviewed Chinatown Beat by Henry Chang (A Detective Jack Yu Investigation, #1)

Police procedural with a second generation Chinese American detective

Jack Yu is a detective who is assigned to New York's Chinatown beat, where he grew up. There's a crime and an investigation and I really enjoyed that it involved shoe leather and collecting clues and not jumping to conclusions. But the heart of the story is really about Jack Yu navigating being second generation, and being a cop on behalf of a white-led power structure policing his own community. He's no dupe, but he also doesn't think Chinese people should prey on their own. A childhood friend was murdered by a Chinese gang. Jack Yu's is to become law & order. Another friend's response is to become the leader of another crew that exacts revenge. Years later, they come in contact around the crime at the center of this story.

The ethical lens is presented by the author as complex, and the portrayal is a series of fuzzy compromises …

Subjects

  • Fiction, mystery & detective, general
  • Chinese americans, fiction
  • New york (state), fiction
  • New york (n.y.), fiction