Customer Reviews

Chinatown Angel: A Mystery (Chico Santana Mysteries)

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4 star:		(1)
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Chinatown Angel breathes fresh life into the private dick genre with Latino sage P. I. Chico Santana.

He's the only sensible guy in a senseless world of delusional wannabes and their sychophants. A. E. Roman has a knack for capturing the Bronx, Manhattan and other aspects of urban New York in a kind of loving, romantic haze that reminded me of what the city used to be like and where it is unfortunately going.

Roman does a nice job of framing Chico's world in a context that makes you want to flip the pages, not just for Chico's comical, Quixotic quips but for the passages which at times grabbed me by the throat & short hairs.

If you liked Get Shorty or even Polanski's Chinatown, you might have a hoot with this guy's Latino Noir.

Roman's Puerto Rican P. I. Santana's incurable nostalgia & quick wit peppered in with colorful cohorts add a distinct feel to this first novel. I dug it, big time.

I would not usually pick up a mystery book for my own reading pleasure, but when I read "Chinatown Angel" by A. E. Roman from the first page I knew it was going to be a good book. Page after page the story became more and more suspenseful. I fell in love with P.I. Chico Santana's witty, smart comments and his passion for the job at hand. Also, with the ladies. Another reason I loved the book was that setting was the Bronx and NYC. As I was reading...I could picture every location P.I. Santana as he found himself in different situations during his intervention.

I highly recommend this book....I love it so...=)

A witty and funny ride through parts of NYC we rarely read about. A great read and I am looking forward to more of Chico.

By M (New York, NY)
Set in the mean streets of New York, "Chinatown Angel" by A.E. Roman is brutally poetic, a mystery filled with heart-wrenching characters, the disenfranchised and the ambitious, the tragic and the absurd, the romantic and the cynical. The book is a rare combination of fast-paced entertainment and moments that are agonizingly true and tender, woven seamlessly together into a tapestry of heart, guts and soul. A damn fun read, too!

Chinatown Angel moves fast. Really fast. The novel's plot twists and turns like a bus map of Queens. Luckily, the book's narrating protagonist is Bronx-born Chico Santana, a private investigator who thinks fast on his feet and is even quicker with the wise-cracks. When a childhood friend, Albert Garcia, introduces Chico to spoiled, rich, wannabe-movie star, Kirk Atlas, who is willing to pay big bucks to find his missing cousin--a gifted violinist named Tiffany who's run off from Julliard--Chico doesn't like the feel of the deal. But his wife's put him out, he's quit his job, he's living in a basement, and he's behind on his bills. So Chico pulls himself out of his funk, takes the money, and hits the streets he knows so well, leading the reader on a trail that leads to murder, secrets, betrayal, and poetry.

Action-packed, peppered with laugh-out-loud dialogue, and full of characters drawn with specificity and humanity, you'll be drawn into this twisted urban tale in a New York minute.

Fans of mystery and good, sharp writing will enjoy this debut novel set in New York City, starring a unique protagonist: Chico Santana hearkens back to tough-talking noir detectives of the 1930s and 40s but brings a contemporary sensibility to the genre. The dialogue sizzles, the story barrels along like the IRT express, and certain poetic passages may well leave you breathless. A great read; highly recommended.

In New York City, commercial actor Kirk Atlas hires private investigator Chico Santana to find his missing teenage cousin Tiffany, Chinese-Cuban American. His inquiry takes Chico to Queens where Pilar Menendez offers him money not return Tiffany to Kirk. Soon afterward, Chico observes someone pushes Pilar from the rooftop of her Astoria building.

Chico learns that Tiffany's brother died from a heroin overdose and her father Samuel runs HMD Financial. The sleuth locates Tiffany and Irving Goldberg Jones, who is in hiding after writing a story about a person forced to OD on heroin. Still the case fails to tie together even as more deaths follow. He is abducted by Kirk's crazy father, and an incriminating sex tape seems to be getting around the city.

This is a fun urban noir that lampoons the sub-genre as Chico is the man who has turned his life around since his wife Ramona kicked him out of their apartment and under the Pelham 123. Chico's amusing asides as he escorts the audience through the boroughs make for a lighthearted tale. Fans who enjoy a tough hero will want to join Chico's tour of Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.

Harriet Klausner

First-time author A. E. Roman serves up a solid line drive in his debut novel, Chinatown Angel. Digging deep into the blood and bone of the private eye tales first hammered out by Raymond Chandler in Los Angeles, Roman riffs a concoction that remains original and adds a salsa Latino/Black beat that turns the milieu off-center.

I enjoyed meeting Chico Santana in this book, and I had a blast chasing after him up and down the bleak streets of New York where memories hung on every corner for him. Thankfully, those memories are interesting tales in and of themselves, and there's a whole lot more to uncover as the series (there's already a second book out only a couple months ago) progresses.

The plot seems to have sprung from Chandler's potboilers, then chugged straight into the Bronx to visit squalor, violence, and twisted family ties that echo the cases Philip Marlowe and his kin had since waded through. Chico is a different kind of hero, though. When he gets into trouble, he doesn't immediately reach for a gun. In fact, he doesn't want to kill anyone at all.

And he's hard to impress. Even meeting rising Hollywood action star Kirk Atlas leaves Chico unfazed. Of course, Chico isn't in a good place. He's just been kicked out of his home by his wife Ramona.

I liked the way Chico's family and friends kept parading through the book. If it hadn't been for his friend Albert, the wannabe filmmaker that was tied up with Kirk Atlas, Chico wouldn't have been brought into the search for Tiffany (Atlas's missing cousin).

Ramona plays a big role in who Chico is and how he defines himself, but she barely hit the pages at all in a meaningful way. She remained a cipher to me on many levels, and I didn't understand why he was so enamored of her. But Chico certainly isn't the only private eye carrying a torch for a broken love these days, and Philip Marlowe had marital problems of his own in Playback.

The novel's plot got so twisted in the later pages that I had to stop and think from time to time about who was who and what Chico was really looking for. I had to work to keep it straight, but Roman has everything there. I expect he'll smooth out as he keeps working. I've already ordered his second book and look forward to reading it.

The main thing that readers will carry away from this novel is the haunting tone that Roman lays down through Chico Santana. He's part smart-aleck, part-innocent, and part-noble warrior. The book also gives some insight to the Latino culture and the edgier sides of New York, which were welcome tours.

I'm not a noir or New York City fan, so I was a little hesitant when I first picked this up. By the end of the book, I was in awe. Chinatown Angel is a rare thing in the mystery field - a novel that stands on its own, transcending the genre. I'm sorry it was marketed as a mystery, rather than a novel. It's more interesting than most mysteries I've read. It's actually about something, rather than just being an entertaining read. The writing is wonderful - sometimes gritty, sometimes breathtakingly poetic and heartbreaking. I found the plot a little hard to follow at times, but just hang on for the ride. It's a good one!

I liked almost everything about this fast-paced, literate, twisty story. The NY setting is vivid, the characters have depth, and the plot is suitably convoluted. The writing is quite good. To wit: "His torso was the size of a mini fridge, packed tight." I liked the fact that even passing characters were uniquely rendered, such as a neighbor who has pit bulls named Killer and Sweetie. Ha! Overall I thought "Chinatown Angel" was very nicely done and I will recommend it to friends.