San Francisco comes alive in Tim Maleeny's engaging and confident debut thriller, Stealing the Dragon, a dark but witty book that showcases a new talent that is likely to please many readers.
When a container ship filled with illegal Chinese immigrants runs aground on Alcatraz Island, the crew slaughtered like cattle, private investigator Cape Weathers decides to find out what happened. His motives aren’t mercenary, but personal. He’s afraid that his friend Sally, a woman with a shadowy, hidden past, might have been the killer.
Weathers’ investigation takes him into Chinatown where he runs up against the Triads, a local leader with his eyes on the mayors’ office and an exiled mob boss improbably named One-Eyed Dong. The colorful characters are just part of the fun in this fast-paced story. Even better are the flashbacks to Sally’s life growing up in a Hong Kong school for assassins.
Stealing the Dragon is an entertaining story that combines a gumshoe mystery in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett with the exotic action of Trevanian. If the detective story isn’t as interesting as the other aspects of the plot, it is still refreshing to see an author trying to do something different in the PI genre.
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