Customer Reviews

Chinatown Beat (Soho Crime)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I finished Henry Chang's CHINATOWN BEAT (Soho Press, 2006). The foreign-flavored mysteries Soho Press specializes in publishing appeal to me. Mr. Chang's debut novel is a top-notch entry.
It features NYPD Detective Jack Yu. The locale is in New York's Chinatown area. Written in a gritty, vivid, and detailed prose, Jack runs two concurrent investigations: one for a serial rapist singling out young Chinese girl victims, and the second one for solving the murder of a Chinese elder and community leader named Uncle Four. Jack's personal life is in a bit of shambles as deals with his father's death. The old Chinese ways clash with the 1990 New York City. Jack is a relentless, likeable detective who's not above turning to a Chinese fortune teller for a clue. The chase sequence of the killers leading to the climax (away from NYC) is deftly paced. This crime novel is worth reading if just for the page-after-page of details on Chinese-American culture. The violence is restrained, and the story multi-layered. Recommended.

I'll give this a B+ for atmosphere and a B- for plot. The atmosphere is great and you really get a better perspective on the triads and the overseas chinese associations. The storyline I found a little weak and meandering. I'll still buy the next installment though, just to give Henry the benefit of the doubt.

New York Chinatown native Chang introduces NYPD Detective Jack Yu. Also born and raised in Chinatown, Jack has just buried his immigrant father. Their differences - among them Jack's career - were unresolved, and Jack's grief is tangled up with the conflict between his Chinatown roots and his chosen Americanization.

The plot is a bit confused - involving a serial rapist of schoolgirls and growing turf tension between the established Tongs and the rising street gangs. But the plot takes a backseat to Chang's fascinating evocation of Chinatown culture, dynamics, and tension. Prejudice and racism run rampant through the community and the mostly white officers who police it.

Chang delves deep and fast, requiring a bit of effort from the reader to follow him into hidden byways and unaccustomed thought patterns. This is a promising debut from a knowledgeable, unflinching writer.

"Chinatown Beat" isn't a mystery--we watch the murder that is central to the plot take place from the point of view of the killer. It is a very gritty crime novel that features New York Police Detective Jack Yu, and American Born Chinese (ABC) who is (as so many cop heroes seem to be) caught between two worlds. The friend he ran with as a teenager is gangster with a crew working for one of the many Triads with links to organized crime in Hong Kong, Shanghai and in every Chinatown in North America.

There are elements of police procedural here as we follow Jack Yu on his Chinatown rounds although Henry Chang is most interested in making sure the reader knows how undocumented Chinese immigrants live, suffer and die in the gang controlled urban wilderness that is the Lower East Side, Chinatown and Alphabet City in Manhattan. They are taken advantage of by the "snakehead" immigrant smugglers, the Chinese owned businesses where they work to pay off the cost of their trip. They are preyed upon by Black and Latin gangs from the Riis Homes and other projects but are afraid of the police and the white power structure.

Despite the axes he obviously grinds, Chang develops his characters very well--we are interested in what is happening to Jack and those around him, feel some of his pain at the lonely death of his father and wonder if he will get anywhere with the attractive Chinese American attorney who sees him as just another person out to harm her clients.

"Chinatown Beat" rings very true--its details and descriptions seem as real as anything I have read. There are problems at the very end of the book once the characters leave Manhattan and the last page might as well have "to be continued" stamped on it. Other than those quibbles it is well worth reading.

Generally you get all these stereotypical Asian novels that don't actually show you anything about the way modern Asians live, but Chinatown Beat changes all that. You get an inside look into the underground of New York's Chinatown, and dear god it's FASCINATING. You find yourself plunged into this pool of suspense and culture that you never want to escape from. If you want to become better exposed to the myriad of cultures around you, just open this book. Good job Henry Chang!

The author is the Dashiell Hammett of Chinatown. An intense reading experience, shedding light on aspects of New York one does not usually think about. Great characters, especially Mona, and I can't wait for the sequel.

If you are a hard core reader of who-dunnits, you may be disappointed by this book. It is not really a mystery, but more a gritty,non-stereotypical book about NY's Chinatown. An interesting read, if for no other reason than you have not read anything like this before.
And if you like this one, the author's next book, Year of the Dog, is worth it as well. A bit more rambling in its plot than this one, but delves deeper into Chinatown and focuses even less on the 'mystery.'

As a "jook sing" growing up in another Chinatown in the late 60's to early 80's, I think HC succeeded in capturing and conveying the dynamics of the old sojourners, newly arrived immigrants and ABCs (American Born Chinese) living, or struggling, to fit in an insular community that, back then, existed as much a function of choice as it was a response to a legacy of anti-Chinese racism.

This is a book that my two teen sons can read to get another perspective on the milieu I experienced in contrast to the more multicultural, urban setting that they are currently growing up in. Well done.

There are many things to praise about Chinatown Beat, a noir detective novel set in New York City Chinatown. I particularly enjoyed getting to know Jack Yu, a complex, alienated Chinese American detective who doesn't fit the model minority stereotype, a kind of anti-hero who carries a lot of anger and who has an ambivalent (to say the least) relationship with his own community. I also found some of the other characters fascinating and refreshingly multi-dimensional, even the bad guys. I am looking forward to following Jack Yu's career, as Chinatown Beat is one of a three-part series.

This police procedure/crime fiction is Chang's first book and is set in New York's Chinatown. It is realistic and gritty. It has a noir feel. The characters are alive on the page. The "good" and "bad" are not always easy to define. Everyone is out to survive, and then there is the importance of "face". Very good writing.