Chinatown Beat

Synopsis

“This is a nasty, terse slice of noir, and Yu is a fellow whose adventures should be worth following.”—The Washington Post Book World

“For readers who relish noir suspense, it doesn't get much better than this stunning novel."—The Boston Globe

“It is an evocative, often bleak, but fascinating view of being at ‘cross-cultural odds’ that fuels Chinatown Beat, the successful debut by New York author Henry Chang.”—South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Chinatown Beat is a classic noir, filled with longing, violence, and that uniquely urban melancholy, but it also brings something new to the table, a loving specificity of a people and place, the multicultures of New York’s Chinatown, that has rarely if ever been encountered in fiction before. A real discovery.”—Richard Price, author of Freedomland and Clockers

“An auspicious beginning.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch

NYPD Detective Jack Yu was raised in Chinatown. Some of his old friends are criminals now; some are dead.

Recently transferred to his old neighborhood, where 99 percent of the cops are white, Jack is confronted with a serial rapist who preys on young Chinese girls. Then Uncle Four, an elderly leader of the charitable Hip Ching Society and member of the Hong Kong-based Red Circle Triad, is gunned down. To solve these crimes, Jack turns to both modern police methods and an ancient fortuneteller.

Henry Chang was born and raised in New York City’s Chinatown, where he now lives. He is a graduate of the Pratt Institute and The City College of New York and is currently a security director in Manhattan.