Ann Lee and Fang Chen, close friends of the victim, team up with the Boston police to solve this mystifying crime: why would anyone want to murder a harmless middle-aged woman, one who worked as an unassuming mailroom clerk, with no money, no connections, and presumably, no enemies?
Realizing that important clues behind the motive may be buried deep in the victim’s past, they travel to Beijing, where Shao Mei spent more than fifty years of her life. While there, surrounded by the antiquities of China’s rich and complex history, they stumble unwittingly into a cobweb of mystery and danger. Fearing for their lives but determined to press on, they end up unearthing a scandal more deceptive and far-reaching than either could have imagined. (Summary and Pic from goodreads.com)
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
My Review: The thing that’s hard about most mystery/murder books is
the level of violence. It seems that, although murder is obviously very
violent, the rest of the book must follow suit. Lots of mystery books embrace
this fully and strive for that PG-13/R rating with sexual content, language,
and other violence to boot. I am happy to report that this book did nothing of
the sort. It was refreshing, actually, to not have to wade through the detritus
of some authors’ determination to not only make their book about murder but
about the grittiest of life’s situations as well.
The murder mystery in this book was nothing shocking—at
the end I wasn’t really all that surprised about who it was—but that doesn’t
mean that it wasn’t a good story or that there weren’t some interesting twists
and turns along the way. I especially liked that the main characters working on
solving the crime weren’t super heroes, making intellectual leaps and
connections that no normal person could make. They seemed to be normal
individuals who were solving the crime, which was a nice change from the
normally Herculean efforts that come from those detective novels whose ability
to solve crimes is downright uncanny, connecting dots that weren’t necessarily
there with knowledge they didn’t necessarily have or that was placed in front
of them by the author like a little trail of bread crumbs wherein at the end a
huge intellectual leap can be made and all would be
solved. This book was more realistic, which was refreshing.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book was
the cultural aspects of it. It takes place in America and China, and I really
enjoyed the view of Chinese Americans and also Chinese immigrants going back to
visit family in their home country. I learned a lot about the culture and it
was a really interesting perspective, I thought, which added depth and richness
to the book.
In the end I would say this is a quite little mystery
book with an interesting story and likeable, realistic characters. It’s a nice
change from the super grittiness of normal murder mystery books, but still
provides enough intrigue and gore to not be totally light sauce.
My Rating: 3.5
Stars
For the Sensitive
Reader: There is some violence in this book, although it is light compared to
other books in the genre. There is no sexual content and little offensive
language. It would be rated PG.
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