A couple of US Commerce dept. investigators, a woman and a man, are missing in China, and Lars Severin, a gifted but drunk slacker, is sent after them by the uncle of the missing woman. What follows is a conspiracy from all angles and murder in relation to international trade.

In the story, Lars Severin picks a partner, Zhang, another American of Chinese origin who can talk Chinese, and the two find their way to China. The case becomes more and more complicated with every step, but to find out about the exciting action, the readers have to read the story themselves.

As to the characters, I could pity Lars, but truthfully, I couldn’t warm up to him, although later in the story he became more tolerable. Zhang was the nicer of the two and his character could be developed just a tad more. To the writer’s favor, the story arc was constructed with skill. The author hid the real perpetrator well until the end, and I liked it that what was thought to be a simple murder, in the beginning, turned out to become an international conspiracy.

The storytelling was fine in general, but from my point of view, a few things could be improved. One of them was the banter between Zhang and Severin, which was fun to read at first but it became tiresome and annoying in the long run. Only toward the end, it dwindled somewhat. The second one is the information-giving section where Zhang lectures about China as if teaching a geography or social-history lesson. Nothing is wrong with informing the readers, but I thought the way that information was inserted into the story took away from the flow of the story. That same information, which took long paragraphs of lecturing by Zhang, could be given piecemeal during the action by using one or two sentences at each time.

Still, I enjoyed reading this book and how the mystery wound down at the end.

the multicultural angle

who the protagonist was.

D.C. Alexander, also the author of The Legend of Devil's Creek.

I believe the author put in a good amount of work into it and I enjoyed reading it, but it isn't free from flaws.

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Created May 07, 2018 at 4:03pm • Submit your own review...