9Tail Fox [Paperback]

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 2007

Sergeant Bobby Zha of the SFPD is desperate to find out who murdered him. But he also needs the answers to some other questions. Like, why is he in another man's body? Why is someone trying to kill him, again... And why is he being haunted by a nine-tailed Celestial fox? From the shell-shattered ruins of Stalingrad in 1942 to the present-day politics of San Francisco's Chinatown, 9Tail Fox is evocative of place and crystal-clear in its depiction of character.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Grimwood, best known for his alternate-history Arabesk trilogy (Effendi, etc.), manages a new wrinkle on a classic noir plot line with this intriguing paranormal mystery. San Francisco police sergeant Bobby Zha refuses to accept the department's conclusion that Natalie Persikov, a young Russian girl who has no familiarity with firearms, managed to kill an intruder, but he himself is gunned down in a sordid back alley before he can prove Persikov's innocence. After experiencing a mystical vision of a nine-tailed white fox, Zha regains consciousness in another man's body, a continent away from everything he knows. Using his new identity, Zha returns home in time to attend his own funeral and investigate his own murder. While the revelation of the killer is less than a surprise, Grimwood does sustain interest with a premise that could have fallen flat in lesser hands. (July)
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From Booklist

When you're murdered, you'd think your story would be over. Not so for Bobby Zha, a San Francisco cop who, after being shot and killed, awakes in New York, in the body of a man who has been in a coma. But Bobby is not as gobsmacked as you might expect because, while he was dying, a mythological, nine-tailed fox appeared to him and announced that he had one last chance to rediscover what makes life worth living and, incidentally, find out who murdered him. Grimwood, a British sf writer with a well-deserved reputation for mind-expanding ideas and entertaining characters, here takes a slightly familiar premise (man seeks vengeance from beyond the grave) and turns it into something wholly fresh, exciting, and suspenseful. Bobby Zha is a complex character, a man for whom death is the first giant step on a road to self-improvement (you might even say death's the best thing that ever happened to him). The typical revenge story, in other words, is transformed into a story of personal redemption—and a darn good one at that. Pitt, David

Product Details

• Paperback: 259 pages
• Publisher: Night Shade Books; First Editiion edition (May 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597800783
• ISBN-13: 978-1597800785
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,803,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good premise, well written, but not entirely my thing, September 7, 2009

By 

A. Finch (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 9Tail Fox (Paperback)

I spotted 9Tail Fox a few months ago on Night Shade's website and wanted to read it ever since (mostly because of the cover). I found it on Amazon for a pittance, read it, and was disappointed. It's not a terrible book, but I didn't really enjoy reading it, either.

The things I liked were mostly in the writing and in the little parts of the story that didn't involve Sergeant Zha. I liked how there weren't any giant infodumps hurled at me; instead, small bits of information were scattered around like breadcrumbs. I had to follow them to arrive at a complete picture, and it was kind of fun. As long as I don't have to work too hard to understand a character, I don't mind doing a bit of piecing together. Sometimes it's nice learning about people one chapter at a time, instead of having it all crammed together in one or two paragraphs.

The supernatural elements were pretty sparse-- this isn't so much an urban fantasy mystery as a mystery with paranormal elements vaguely touching the edges of it. And it's not even so much a mystery as it is a story about a policeman who messed up everything in his life, including his death. (It's got so many layers in it I'm surprised it hasn't been used in one of my English classes. Aha.)

I think my biggest difficulty with this book was that I didn't like Sergeant Zha. In fact, I hated him most of the time. I think I was supposed to dislike him, though, since multiple times throughout the book characters said he was a bastard and a scoundrel, which is a pretty big clue that, y'know, he isn't a good guy. Plus he doesn't really do anything to contradict that until maybe the very end of the story.

It's a very hard thing to do, reading a book where the protagonist isn't meant to be liked. I've had better luck with that sort of thing before (Empress, for instance), but for some reason it didn't work for me here. I liked some of the other characters, like the ex-military homeless people who help Sergeant Zha out, but overall the book isn't filled with people I care about (or want to read about).

9Tail Fox is an interesting book with a good plot, and though I didn't enjoy all of it, it wasn't horrible at all. It just wasn't my thing.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great twist on the hard-boiled detective novel, March 2, 2010

By 

Marc Jacobs "Renaissance Otaku" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 9Tail Fox (Paperback)

I read this book in a week. It was hard to put down and thoroughly enjoyable.

The book is a murder mystery, in the hard-boiled detective style. Bobby Zha is a SFPD officer based in Chinatown, more at home with vagrants and homeless people than the members of the force. So far, so good. The book twists by having the protagonist killed within the first few chapters. He then has to solve his own murder. Sweet setup.

The Nine Tail Fox of the title is a Chinese mystical creature, and it is the conceit of the book that such a creature is real. There isn't much other SF or Fantasy than that. The rest of the book is a straight-up detective novel, tightly plotted and well written.

To his credit, the author writes about a hard-boiled hero who is a real SOB. The hero's journey in the book is as much about realizing and resolving that character flaw as it about solving the crime. Both threads of the story work.

I liked that the book was set in San Francisco. The city was a real part of the story, with settings in Chinatown, Russian Hill and elsewhere, all of them detailed. Chinatown in particular comes off in a believable way, and doesn't feel like the tourist postcard version. Snarky comments abound, for example one about tourists who come looking for the Beats, yet shop at Borders.

Truly delightful. Recommended.

From Night Shade Books.

5.0 out of 5 stars Letter to the Publisher, April 29, 2008

By 

Weston Ochse (Southern Arizona) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 9Tail Fox (Paperback)

Man. I traveled from Southern Arizona to Wash D.C. today and spent my time with Mr. Grimwood. Thankfully, I had a two hour layover in Dallas, where we sat and sweated on the tarmac. I say thankfully, because I had such a damn good book with me, I didn't even realize I was being held hostage by the airlines once again. The time worked out well. I'd read the first three chapters yesterday and then as we crossed the Patomac into Reagan International, I finished the story. Glorious last paragraph which I could tell the author worked, reworked and perfected. I closed the book with a smile.

When I bought the book in SLC, it was the cover that grabbed me. Jon Foster did a terrific job, but whatever he achieved was multiplied by the really amazing design work that Claudia did. I keep looking at the cover. I really dig it. I want a cover like that!!!

And the book? The story of Bobbi Zha? I'm now a fan of Mr. Grimwood.

From the sweeping plot to the subplots to the humanism in the characters, it's the kind of stuff I like to read. I'll read whatever he writes. Did the book have a few problems? Sure. A rough spot here or there, and a question I had left unanswered, but these were really washed aside by raw humanity of the piece and the author's ability to make San Francisco, not just the setting for the novel, but a member of the cast.