Customer Reviews

Stealing Time

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

 

 

By far the best in this compelling series, STEALING TIME is a gripping read. I am constantly shocked by Glass's masterful ability to bring her reader inside the complex and realistic character of April Woo again and again. Unlike many other mystery series I have tried, the TIME series creates a true fictional world inhabited by believable and engaging characters; it remains the only modern mystery series that captivates my attention. STEALING TIME is a gem. Cheers, Ms. Glass! Keep up the good work!

Once again Leslie Glass has produced a fast paced lst rate mystery centered upon a heroine, Dectective Woo, of complexity -- a modern professional woman who struggles to preserve loyalty to her family yet separate psychologically from family myths and outdated cultural expectations which distress her.The reader is provided a double treat: the opportunity to track down the "bad guys" while enjoying this heroine's psychological growth.

I recommend this book to any mystery buff who enjoys a plot of medium complexity, some interesting characters, and a touch of humor. The book is one of a series featuring NYPD detective April Woo, who is not anyone's idea of a stereotypical Chinese-American female. She, however, must deal with multicultural pressures including her own zany mother who's prescription for any medical ailment is "dragon bones and sour herbs". The mystery involves a missing child and a beaten mother and brings April back to her old haunts in New York's Chinatown where the reader is introduced to a number of sinister characters. There is no gratuitous violence; there is not a long list of suspects or crimes. I had one disappointment with the plot. The book devotes much time in building up the reader's compassion for one of the characters only to have the character killed off; I would have liked a happier ending. But it held my attention and I look forward to more in the series.

I really liked this mystery! April Woo is a wonderful heroine...complex, victimized by a mother who just happens to be Chinese (but sounds a lot like many mothers I have known), and fighting her insecurities just like the rest of us. The New York background is well drawn, and the plot is crafted intricately and maintains suspense. Leslie Glass is a writer who crafts her prose well, too. "Stealing Time" is one good book.

NYPD detective April Woo is assigned a disturbing case. A Chinese-American mother is beaten senseless and her newborn infant is kidnapped. What first appears to be an open and shut domestic crime turns out to be something more sinister. April's budding career is on thin ice as she is forced to expose big city names that are linked with the heinous act.

April Woo is a strongly written character. She is bright and ambitious yet she also struggles with insecurities. She was reared in two cultures and must deal with the clashing of such. Certainly she is not the super heroine described in other bestsellers. This quality gives April a realism most professional women can relate to.

As for the plot itself, it was somewhat lacking. The pace was slow, the action was limited, and no big surprises jumped out at the reader. If you're an April Woo fan you are sure to enjoy it. If you pick the book up at the library or borrow it from a friend, then give it a whirl. Otherwise you may want to keep your money in your pocketbook.

april woo faces her toughest case yet; a woman battered and her kidnapped child, and the prime suspect is the victim's husband. it's a highly visible case, and to make things even more difficult, april's working with a rookie detective, woody baum. she still has the support of her lover, sgt mike sanchez, but they're no longer working together; he's assigned to the homicide task force. the plot is a little thinner than what i've come to expect from leslie glass; the identity of the child's birth mother was a little too obvious; the suspect list was pretty darned short, and i was a little impatient with april, who's a very competent cop, but she takes this kind of insult from her mom? yeah, we're all doormats to some extent, but come on! this is a really good book compared to lots of others out there, but i've come to expect the very best from leslie glass, and this just isn't her greatest work.

I read this because I'd read and enjoyed another April Woo book. Now, I have to question my judgment on that one -- was it similar to this, or was I just in a forgiving mood? Because I found this book awful. Fairly lame plot with very little mystery to it, overdone writing, and some really annoying inaccuracies.

For example, the baby at the center of this book is supposedly half-Chinese, but has BLUE EYES. Green eyes might be possible -- I know of a friend's child who is biracial with a Japanese father, and has blond hair and green eyes -- but given the fact that blue eyes are recessive, blue eyes in this case are a genetic impossibility, and I wonder why no editor caught it. Small point perhaps, but it made me picky about other parts of this book, and easily annoyed with a lot of its other faults.

A far more serious problem is that the depictions of April's mother verge incredibly close to stereotype, so close I found them offensive. Yeah, yeah: inscrutable Asian parents consult herbalist, brew up mystical brew, scream at daughter in stereotypical bad English, make comments about the "shame of the Han people...." I mean, REALLY. Aren't we beyond this yet? As an aspiring fiction writer myself, I don't have much trouble usually with writers attempting to write outside the worlds they themselves are part of, but this one really set alarm bells going. I hope Leslie Glass ran these scenes past some Chinese-American acquaintances, because they're so extreme that, given her lack of Chinese ancestry, I really see no reason to trust them. Which makes them doubly offensive.

The problematic descriptions don't stop there. Mike Sanchez's Mexican mother is shown (luckily briefly) wearing a garish dress that "shows off all her curves." This too verges very close to offensive.

Kudos to Leslie Glass for having an Asian detective in the first place. But this book is abysmal. I hope later ones in the series improve.

Heather Rose Popescue, a Chinese-American married to Anton, an abusive male, gives away the baby she has passed off as her own. She knows Anton will be furious, but she is determined to do the right thing from now on. That is an understatement as she is beaten into unconsciousness for refusing to have sex with the Popescue who comes into her home.

The case is assigned to Sargent April Woo with extreme pressure to quickly solve the case: discover Heather's attacker and find out the location of the missing baby. However, April soon learns that Heather never gave birth to the missing child and Anton is too clever to leave the marks on her face that the culprit left. April digs deeper even though she has to place her own life on the line to catch the true perpetrator.

STEALING TIME provides readers with a gigantic growth in April's role as a police officer and as a woman. She now heads up the investigation and it is her career that is on the line if she fails to produce the answers. Though he is finally her lover, Mike Sanchez is no longer her partner. Readers will begin to woo Leslie Glass, who keeps getting better with each new novel. Leslie Glass has the talent to take her to the top of her chosen profession.

Harriet Klausner

because I forgot that I already read it. This copy was printed in 2000 so I had to have read it within the last 4 years, but I couldn't remember a thing. I got half way through it the second time before I came across something that I recognized. The memorable piece for me was such a minor plot point, I finished the book again anyway because I still couldn't remember how it ended. It was okay while I was reading it (good enough to read twice), but it obviously didn't stick to my ribs the first time.