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Asian American private investigator Lydia Chin knows New York City's Chinatown, its people, and its ways as no outsider ever could. It's a city within a city, a rich melange of smells, sounds, dark shops, and close-knit families - a world all its own. And in all of Chinatown, there is no one like Lydia, who has a nose for trouble, a disapproving Chinese mother, and a partner named Bill Smith who's been living above a bar for 16 years. Hired to find some precious stolen porcelain, Lydia follows a trail of clues from highbrow art dealers into a world of Chinese gangs.
Introducing Wyoming's Sheriff Walt Longmire in this riveting novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Dry Bones, the first in the Longmire series, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Longmire. Johnson draws on his deep attachment to the American West to produce a literary mystery of stunning authenticity, full of memorable characters.
In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees when a young woman literally stumbles into him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes - and match him wit for wit. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern 20th-century woman proves a deft protégée and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective.
As the Christmas decorating season approaches, Thyme & Seasons proprietor China Bayles feels overwhelmed. While she tries to balance her new roles of wife and step-mom with the demands of her thriving herbal shop, her business partner and best friend, Ruby, mysteriously disappears. Soon China's cantankerous mistletoe supplier Carl turns up dead. With Ruby missing and friends suspected of murder, China must investigate before tragedy strikes again.
The producer of a troubled play invites the cast to spend the weekend in his remote Scottish Highlands estate to hash out the problems. When the housemaid finds the playwright murdered in bed, Thomas Lynley and his partner must unmask the villain.
The end of her high-profile broadcasting career came too soon for TV journalist Alison Reynolds - bounced off the air by executives who wanted a "younger face". With a divorce from her cheating husband of 10 years also pending, there is nothing keeping her in L.A. any longer.
Asian American private investigator Lydia Chin knows New York City's Chinatown, its people, and its ways as no outsider ever could. It's a city within a city, a rich melange of smells, sounds, dark shops, and close-knit families - a world all its own. And in all of Chinatown, there is no one like Lydia, who has a nose for trouble, a disapproving Chinese mother, and a partner named Bill Smith who's been living above a bar for 16 years. Hired to find some precious stolen porcelain, Lydia follows a trail of clues from highbrow art dealers into a world of Chinese gangs.
Introducing Wyoming's Sheriff Walt Longmire in this riveting novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Dry Bones, the first in the Longmire series, the basis for the hit Netflix original series Longmire. Johnson draws on his deep attachment to the American West to produce a literary mystery of stunning authenticity, full of memorable characters.
In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees when a young woman literally stumbles into him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes - and match him wit for wit. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern 20th-century woman proves a deft protégée and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective.
As the Christmas decorating season approaches, Thyme & Seasons proprietor China Bayles feels overwhelmed. While she tries to balance her new roles of wife and step-mom with the demands of her thriving herbal shop, her business partner and best friend, Ruby, mysteriously disappears. Soon China's cantankerous mistletoe supplier Carl turns up dead. With Ruby missing and friends suspected of murder, China must investigate before tragedy strikes again.
The producer of a troubled play invites the cast to spend the weekend in his remote Scottish Highlands estate to hash out the problems. When the housemaid finds the playwright murdered in bed, Thomas Lynley and his partner must unmask the villain.
The end of her high-profile broadcasting career came too soon for TV journalist Alison Reynolds - bounced off the air by executives who wanted a "younger face". With a divorce from her cheating husband of 10 years also pending, there is nothing keeping her in L.A. any longer.
Three very different women come together to complete an environmental survey. Three women who, in some way or another, know the meaning of betrayal.... For team leader Rachael Lambert, the project is the perfect opportunity to rebuild her confidence after a double betrayal by her lover and boss, Peter Kemp. Botanist Anne Preece, on the other hand, sees it as a chance to indulge in a little deception of her own. And then there is Grace Fulwell, a strange, uncommunicative young woman with plenty of her own secrets to hide....
Maisie Dobbs isn't just any young housemaid. Through her own natural intelligence - and the patronage of her benevolent employers - she works her way into college at Cambridge. After the War I and her service as a nurse, Maisie hangs out her shingle back at home: M. DOBBS, TRADE AND PERSONAL INVESTIGATIONS. But her very first assignment soon reveals a much deeper, darker web of secrets, which will force Maisie to revisit the horrors of the Great War and the love she left behind.
Sigrid is still reeling from the untimely death of her lover, acclaimed painter Oscar Nauman, when she is called to investigate the deaths of two homeless men in the West Village. The police at first assume an overdose, until they realize that one of the men shows no signs of drug use. Then when containers of poisoned takeout food are found nearby, Sigrid's case is suddenly much more complicated.
Ian Rutledge returns to his career at Scotland Yard after years fighting in the First World War. Unknown to his colleagues he is still suffering from shell shock, and is burdened with the guilt of having had executed a young soldier on the battlefield for refusing to fight. A jealous colleague has learned of his secret and has managed to have Rutledge assigned to a difficult case which could spell disaster for Rutledge whatever the outcome. A retired officer has been murdered, and Rutledge goes to investigate.
It’s not every day that you’re summoned to the Italian countryside on business, so when archaeologist Angelo Morelli asks for Ruth Galloway’s help identifying bones found in the tiny hilltop town of Fontana Liri, she jumps at the chance to go, bringing her daughter along with her for a working vacation. Upon arriving, she begins to hear murmurs of Fontana Liri’s strong resistance movement during World War II and senses the townspeople are dancing around a deeply buried secret. But how could that be connected to the ancient remains she’s been studying?
Irene Huss is a former Ju-Jitsu champion, a mother of twin teenage girls, the wife of a successful chef, and a Detective Inspector with the Violent Crimes Unit in Goteborg, Sweden. And now she’s back with a gripping follow-up to Detective Inspector Huss. One nurse lies dead and another vanishes after their hospital is hit by a blackout. The only witness claims to have seen Nurse Tekla doing her rounds, but Nurse Tekla died sixty years ago.
It is a cold January morning, and Shetland lies beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a splash of color on the frozen ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor, Catherine Ross. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man - loner and simpleton Magnus Tait.
The little girl was found murdered, her pink nightgown twisted around her throat. She was only five. The woman who came to the funeral to throw a single rose on the coffin was very much alive, and beautiful. The kind of beautiful that homicide detective J. P. Beaumont couldn't resist. But lurking in the dark corners of this bizarre case was not just a demented mind obsessed with murder, but secrets so deadly, so close to Beaumont's own life, that even a street tough cop could die guessing at the answers...
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. Jane Neal, a local fixture in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods, and is soon certain that Jane Neal died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.
When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.
Amelia Peabody inherited two things from her father: a considerable fortune and an unbendable will. The first allowed her to indulge in her life's passion. Without the second, the mummy's curse would have made corpses of them all.
In this final installment of the internationally best-selling Irene Huss Investigations, the gang warfare that has been brewing in Goteborg is about to explode. A member of a notorious biker gang has been set on fire - alive. Even in a culture where ritual killings are common, this brutal assault attracts the attention of both Irene's unit and the Organized Crimes Unit. Anticipating a counterattack, the two units team up to patrol the lavish party of a rival gang, but that doesn't stop another murder from occurring just outside the event hall.
P.I. Bill Smith is sent on a high-stakes chase when an electronically modified voice on his cell phone informs him that Lydia Chin, his occasional partner, has been kidnapped. Now, if Bill wants to keep Lydia alive, he'll have to play an elaborate game of the kidnapper's devising. The first move sends him to an abandoned building, where Bill finds the corpse of a small Chinese woman dressed like Lydia and the building being rapidly surrounded by police. Now he's on the run from the cops and in the worst trouble of his very troubled life.
First, a caution: The profanity in this book is extreme. I’m not at all prudish about language in books, but I expect profanity to be used sparingly and for effect. I realize that Bill is very distraught in the book, and that the other character is insane, but the profanity pervades practically every other sentence. So if this is a concern for you, skip this one. You won’t be missing much.
I have read and enjoyed all of the other Chin/Smith novels and was pleasantly surprised to find this and Rozan’s other new book available after such a long break in the series. While Shanghai Moon felt true to the series, this novel definitely did not. First, Lydia Chin is not really in the book; she is a kidnap victim in a revenge “game” a psychopath plays with Smith. So to call this a Chin/ Smith novel is a misnomer.
So, let’s just take it as any mystery/suspense novel: How does it measure up? Still very poorly. The plot is so wildly contrived that it prevents suspension of disbelief. **SPOILERS AHEAD** The psychopath has Bill going all over town finding kidnapped, injured or dead prostitutes as parts of his “game.” Bill ends up suspected of the crimes; he then runs from the police; he loses his allies. He is at one point arrested; then he escapes. It’s just a series of unfortunate events. Furthermore, since Lydia is the victim he is trying to rescue, and she is a title character, it seems very unlikely that he will fail to find her. So that cut down on the suspense.
I will say that I did finish listening, and I’m not sure why. I’ve dumped plenty of books in the past. I think I just kept hoping that Rozan would somehow redeem herself before the book ended. She didn't.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful
I'm a long-time fan of S. J. Rozan and her Bill Smith/Lydia Chin series. This one was a disappointment to me.
The hostage-kidnapped-by-the-whacko-out-for-revenge is a tired and, frankly, unbelievable plot. Sure, Rozan is good enough to throw lots of twists and turns and the ticking clock scenario is always effective. Still, maybe it's that this is an audiobook, but a Bill Smith's ranting and raving, swearing and screaming is...tiresome and annoying.
I look forward to the next Smith/Chin book and trust S. J. Rozan to return to form.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful