Chinatown Beat Book

PROTAGONIST: Jack Yu, NYPD detective
SETTING: New York City, 1990
SERIES: #1 of 2
RATING: 3.5

There's a truism that an author should write what he knows best, and I'm so glad that Henry Chang followed that advice in his debut novel, Chinatown Beat. Henry Chang grew up in New York's Chinatown, and his experiences have provided an authenticity to the setting that could only be delivered by someone who was intimate with the nuances of the area. In addition, Chang has done an extraordinary job in rendering the cultural setting, the best job that I've seen of that in a very long time.

Detective Jack Yu is an American cop who was born and raised in Chinatown. Surprisingly, he is one of the very few members of the police department who are of Asian ethnicity. In fact, he is the only Asian in his precinct, which is responsible for maintaining law and order in Chinatown. Obviously, this leads to many problems, as the cops on the beat don't understand the language, culture and attitudes of the people they are supposed to be helping. Surprisingly, there is a high degree of racism as well, with the Chinese the lowest in the racial pecking order, beneath blacks and Hispanics. Jack has a delicate juggling act every day of his life, being part of a mostly white police force that doesn't really care about the Chinese it is entrusted to protect, and being a member of the Chinese community. In addition, Jack is coping with the death of his father and the realities of childhood friendships gone awry. Many of his former friends are either dead or deeply engaged in criminal activity.

His current case involves a serial rapist who is preying on young girls in the neighborhood. In addition, the entire area is under tension as the result of the assassination of one of the local Triad leaders, Uncle Four. The former investigation pits Jack directly against some of his childhood friends; the latter leads him to a series of puzzles involving Uncle Four's beautiful mistress who has disappeared. These two cases provide a stark contrast between the world of street thugs and gangs and the Chinatown of the rich and powerful.

Chinatown Beat provided an astonishingly different view of a community that is generally seen as a vibrant and thriving enclave where tourists revel in its eccentricities. Instead, we are exposed to all of its darkness, its perversities and violence. Chang shows us every alley, every gambling joint, while enveloping the reader in the sights, sounds and smells of a totally unique world. He doesn't immerse us in a Chinatown that is sunny and bright, but he does shine a light on a place that the average reader has never seen before. The overt racism was particularly unsettling to me.

Chinatown Beat is noir at its best, a book that shakes you to the core as you look at a world where evil has so much more chance of prevailing than good.