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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780312970116
ISBN number: 0312970110
Label: St. Martin's Dead Letter
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Dead Letter
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 336
Printing Date: July 15, 1999
Publishing house: St. Martin's Dead Letter
Sale Popularity Level: 154658
Studio: St. Martin's Dead Letter
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Product Description:
Joining the company of Sue Grafton, Jonathan Kellerman, and Patricia Cornwell, Shamus Award-winner S.J. Rozan now owns a coveted Anthony Award for Best Novel for her No Colder Place. The Washington Post has called her Bill Smith/Lydia Chin novels ¿a series to watch for.¿ Booklist deemed Rozan ¿a major figure in contemporary mystery fiction.¿ Now it's your turn-- to discover one of fiction's major voices and to fall in love with a mystery of evocative atmosphere, engaging characters, and exquisite writing.
It's Lydia Chin's turn to go underground as the Chinese-American P.I. investigates a case that strikes at the heart of Chinatown's dangerously shifting power structure. Four restaurant workers, including a union organizer, have disappeared, and the union's lawyer hires Lydia to find them. But when a bomb shatters the Chinese Restaurant Workers' Union headquarters, killing one of the missing men and injuring the lawyer, Lydia is summoned by the prime suspect, one of Chinatown's most powerful men, to continue the search--on his payroll. With backup from her partner Bill Smith, Lydia goes undercover as a dim sum waitress, slinging steamed dumplings while dodging a lethal conflict between the old and the new orders, and searching for the missing waiters and their deadly secret--before someone serves them their last supper¿
Amazon.com Review:
There's lots of action, great food, and social insight into the attitudes of various generations of immigrants in S.J. Rozan's fifth book in her superlative Lydia Chin-Bill Smith series. There's also a remarkable moment when Lydia's mother actually admits that she approves of the way her daughter does her job. Mrs. Chin has always hated the fact that Lydia's work as a private detective puts her in danger and in the company of men, like Smith, who don't make suitable husbands. But when Lydia refuses to knuckle under to the demands of a venerable Chinatown patriarch, her mother astonishes her (and us) by praising her 'professional manner'--and then goes on to give her a clue that helps her unravel a mystery involving the smuggling of people and drugs. With each novel, Rozan alternates the narrative focus between Lydia Chin and Bill Smith, and this time it's Lydia's turn to take center stage. She uses her ethnicity and acting talent to work undercover as a dim sum waitress at the Dragon Garden (where four illegal aliens have disappeared) and her deep roots in New York's Chinatown to note and comment on subtle changes in the power structure as new Fukienese-speaking immigrants replace the old Cantonese. She and Smith also move their complicated personal relationship forward a notch and consume vast amounts of wonderful food--Chinese, Jewish, even a homemade meatloaf--in a story that manages to satisify all the senses. Previous Chin-Smith outings in paperback: China Trade, Concourse, Mandarin Plaid, and No Colder Place. --Dick Adler
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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Not an aaaahhhhhhh! Not an uuuuhhhhhhhh! Sort of a ehhhhhhhhh!
A complicated plot that barely kept my interest in a story peopled by characters that I barely cared about.
Lydia was too terminally perky for me, and Bill too forbearing as he graciously accepted an unending stream of rebuffs from her.
I should'a just passed this one by.
Rated by buyers 
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I have read Rozan's very first five novels and they are all very good but this is clearly her best yet. This book has it all: a complex, realistic plot that keeps you guessing until the end, interesting, well-developed characters, great dialogue and a very exciting conclusion. Bill and Lydia are more interesting and entertaining than ever. The thing that impresses me most about this book, however, is simply how well it is written. Rozan's writing is clean and precise and her discriptions of Chinatown are so good I almost felt like I was there. Rozan is now my favorite mystery writer and I hope she writes many, many more.
Rated by buyers 
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With this sumptuously hard-boiled fifth installment in her acclaimed Lydia Chin-Bill Smith series -- which gracefully alternates between the voice of Lydia, a gutsy PI born and raised in New York's Chinatown, and her off-again, on-again partner, Bill -- Shamus-winning Rozan will no doubt regale her fans.
Hired to find four waiters who've gone missing from the Dragon Garden, a busy dim sum establishment owned by a local Cantonese power player, Lydia gets herself a job as a waitress and goes to work on the joint, all the while offering insight into how the community power structure has been transformed as Fukienese-speaking immigrants have superseded the older Cantonese.
And soon enough Lydia and Bill uncover a mystery -- involving drug-smuggling, alien-smuggling and dissident-smuggling -- that brings that ethnic conflict into sharp focus. All in all, a beautiful and gripping novel, brimming with spice, complexity and suspense. (And food -- enormous, mouth-watering quantities of it.) --APBnews.com
Rated by buyers -
S. J. Rozan just gets better with every book! I have read all her books so far and anxiously await the subsequent one! Her writing is so refreshing, she makes you care about the main characters, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith, and you get caught up in what's happening from the very very first chapter. Once you find yourself turning the pages, you hate to finish the book so soon but you just can't resist. This series is one of the best to come along in years and long may S. J. Rozan write!
Rated by buyers -
Ever since I began reading S.J. Rozan, I've been convinced that she is secretly Chinese. Being part Chinese myself, I've found that she more than any other author has conveyed to me what it's like to be a young Chinese American living with an exasperating traditional mother and fighting against racism and sexism to be a P.I. Lydia Chin is a wonderfully believable and likeable character, and in this novel she must resist the pressure to be a stereotypical good Chinese girl and give up her search to find four Chinese waiters who are involved the unionization of a Chinese restaurant. I've also been in love with Lydia's partner, Bill Smith, and throughout her five mysteries have rooted for the two of them to get together. Congratulations to Rozan for creating another enjoyable and exciting mystery.
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