This is the third of Chang's Allen Choice novels. Allen is a
Korean-American private detective whose private life and
dating woes are as important to the books as are the cases he
takes on. So far, the first three books have all entangled
Allen with Linda Maldonado, who became his girlfriend in book
one, broke up with him in book two, and is back in book three
to try to convince him to help find her niece, who's been
kidnapped by her father in a custody battle. Allen has moved
on (or at least he thinks he has) to Serena Yew, a
Korean-American woman he met in book two, who helped him
navigate the rave/drug scene, while he was searching for
Linda's missing/presumed dead younger brother. Serena is more
in touch with her heritage than Allen, and her parents come
to visit, hoping to meet him, which just happens to throw
some extra pressure on him at a rather volatile point in his
investigation.
There are some bad guys at work in this one, and Allen's
investigation turns up an elaborate money-laundering scheme,
which might just have lead to the death of the previous PI
working the case. Allen has to see this through--he feels he
owes Linda--and he can't quite understand why Serena is so
angry with him all the time. Throughout the book, Allen is
also reading Kierkegaard, to further his own self-education,
and he tries to fit the philosopher's ideas to what is
happening in his own life, without much success.
Allen is a great character, a lonely, introspective guy who
was raised by his distant aunt, following the "accidental"
death of his father. As a young boy, he started doing things
like following people around and eavesdropping, just as a way
to pass the time, yet ironically, these pursuits make him an
even better detective. He's an awkward guy in social
situations and he can't quite understand why he keeps
attracting these bright, beautiful women. He's very easy to
identify with and the books have all been really fun so far.
The California setting--Allen's home base is San Francisco
and his cases have taken him around the state--is well
realized and the private detective aspects of the books are
also very satisfying.
I'm very glad I gave the first book, _Over the Shoulder_, a
try and I hope Chang will be writing these books for a long
time to come. Very highly recommended!
Craig Larson Trinidad, CO
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 25 May 2004 EDT