New Taipei Night Market Crime Novel from Ed Lin, THE DEAD CAN'T MAKE A LIVING

 

If you are an American or a European, you may feel like "immigrants" is a fighting word where you live -- the kind of issue that lures people into strong positions and sometimes regrettable statements. Your region's not the only one struggling with issues of migration, migrant workers, and immigration, though.

Ed Lin's newest Taipei Night Market novel (I reviewed Incensed, 99 Ways to Die, and Death Doesn't Forget - click on those) releases from Soho Crime on April 7, but of course you can pre-order it if you like. And THE DEAD CAN'T MAKE A LIVING is so packed with humor, peril, and plot twists that you might as well line up a copy to get you through whatever crises you feel like you are just barely handling.

 It helps if you know what the night market is in Taiwan, but Lin is expert at pulling you into the action with deft strokes of explanation. During his first class session at the night college that Jing-nan recently signed up for, to improve his life options, he's ready with a self-intro: "I want to tell you about my daily life, what it's like at the Shilin Night Market, where I have a stand called Unknown Pleasures. Visitors from every continent around the world love our skewers."

 But his very nasty teacher would rather tell the class about all the crimes Jing-nan's been involved with, calling them "stunts" and saying Jing-nan is associated with figures from Taiwan's underworld.

 Well, that last part is true, but it's not something Jing-nan would talk about --  he does have family members who carry clout in the criminal world. With such a nasty teacher, he's glad to know others will back him up, even though there's always a price to pay for that kind of support, isn't there?

The crux of this crime novel begins to unfold just a few pages in, as a group of Filipino customers are taking up a lot of the seats when Jing-nan gets back to his food stand. His quick math indicates they've spent a lot of money on his food, and he's glad to encourage them.

"We're happy to have generous customers like you. Thank you all so much." I meant it sincerely. These weren't tourists from the Philippines. They were migrant workers, and some had been taking the government Mandarin classes. Maybe they were from the nearby food-processing plant. ... they streamed into the night market, which offered a lot of food and entertainment for relatively cheap. I put my hands together and bowed my head slightly to my customers, a universal sign of humility and appreciation for their business. 

For Jing-nan, that amounts to a commitment to see even these migrant workers treated well. So when one of them is clearly murdered, and another asks him for help finding out what happened, this chef and "adult student" agrees to look into the death.

Soon he's in too deep to back out, and even his uncle Big Eye can't stop bad things from happening to him. Ever the entrepreneur, he speculates on the value of adding a crime blog to his food blog:

My crime posts wouldn't be journalistic and dry. They would start on a visceral note: "Two hours in, blood from my loosened molar continued to drip down my throat. I asked for a drink of water to wash away the metallic taste, but my kidnapper refused. It was going to be a long night."

Will Jing-nan ever make it back to class? Actually, with his relatives interfering on his behalf, will his nasty teacher make it back?? And how will all of this affect his bottom line, his de facto marriage to Nancy, and his ability to staff his food stand?

Admit it. You have to know what happens next. I did ... I couldn't put this one down. 

New Tapei Night Market Mystery from Ed Lin, DEATH DOESN'T FORGET

After a four-year wait, Ed Lin is back with the fourth in his humorous and atmospheric "Taipei Night Market" mystery series. Drenched in delicious details of Taiwan food and food preparation, for Jing-nan's popular stall in Taipei's tourist-dependent Night Market, DEATH DOESN'T FORGET opens with a sweepstakes win for a minor thief named Boxer. When Boxer behaves (predictably) stupidly with the money he's won (200,000 New Taiwan dollars in cash (about US $670), Jing-nan gets roped in -- because Boxer is the boyfriend of the mother of Jing-nan's girlfriend (almost his fiancée), and Boxer's girlfriend Siu-lien wants to know where he's gone to and what he'd done with the money they were supposed to be sharing.

But no good deed goes unpunished, as they say. Jing-nan sets his own needs briefly aside to locate and check on Boxer, who's suffering a painful morning after. Not long afterward, Boxer is murdered ... and police captain Huang, who'd love to see Jing-nan suffer, tries to pin the murder on the hard-working entrepreneur.

Jing-nan shifted his stance as he tried to read Captain Huang's poker face. At the mention of murder both Frankie and Dwayne [Jing-nan's assistants] laid aside their [cooking] instruments and crossed their arms. The line of 10 people at Unknown Pleasures turned to the right to see what exactly was happening. Captain Huang recognized that these tourists understood only rudimentary Mandarin, so to help them out, he pointed at Jing-nan and said in English, "That man is a murderer!" They gasped.

Though the frame doesn't stick, it's quickly clear that Jing-nan's life and business can't be reclaimed until the crime is solved. That's the entry for a tangled plot of motives and opportunities flying around like trapeze artists, swinging past each other in midair, and incidentally featuring several persons of aboriginal descent and a public circus performance.

This mystery has the same big pluses and small minus as the earlier ones by Ed Lin: The plot is lively, the characters unusual and well motivated, and the scenes are intriguing and unusual. On the other hand, the language reads like a translation (which it isn't), perhaps an effort by Lin to add more Taiwanese feel to his storytelling. It may not bother readers who are more interested in how the threads tangle and untangle (and less in the mouth feel, so to speak).

For any shelf of Taiwan or international crime fiction, Ed Lin's books are a must. They hold up to re-reading, too. (Actually, to save on decision making, just collect all of Soho Crime's international mysteries.) Special treats are moments like Jing-nan's reply to Captain Huang, who declines to arrest him (based on evidence): "Well, to hell with that, then. I'm staying here. I have a business to run."

 PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Taipei Night Market (Crime) Novel 3, 99 WAYS TO DIE, Ed Lin

The next "Taipei Night Market" novel, 99 WAYS TO DIE, comes out from Ed Lin and Soho Crime on October 9 -- and it's worth pre-ordering it now, to line up a reading session of enjoyment, lively suspense, and a taste of another world's other world.

Jing-nan, an amiable young man with a strong business drive, runs his dynamic and carefully balanced food stand in a sort of late-hours-only food court in Taipei, Taiwan. He's dead serious about the quality of food he serves, and ponders ways to add interest and excitement to the menu without losing the solid "Yelp" type following he already has among American tourists. His thinking on creating a vegetarian item from a new kind of fruit he finds on sale is downright intriguing (it almost sent me to the kitchen).

But what really counts with Jing-nan is loyalty to his friends. Even when his life is in danger.

So when his former classmate Peggy Lee phones him in tears, even though he has customers queuing at the stand, he's there for her -- although it's hard to understand what's up, between her sobs and the fact that her powerful father (who happens to be Jing-nan's landlord) could not possibly be the victim of a crime. Could he? Fortunately, the two other worked in the stand -- whose ethnicity will soon be significant! -- pick up on the crisis and give Jing-nan room to listen.

I fully turned my attention back to my old classmate. Her sobs had decreased in volume and frequency. Maybe she could talk now.

"Peggy," I said as I looked to the wall. "I want to make sure I heard you right. You said your father was kidnapped?"

"Yes," she managed to say. Peggy Lee, who would be nonchalant while standing on a cliff that was crumbling beneath her feet, was having difficulty verbalizing a single syllable. She must love her father more than anything.

And that, actually, could be a problem for Jing-nan if he gives in and tackles trying to rescue Peggy Lee's dad ... because no matter the risks involved, Peggy will feel they are justified, and won't care if Jing-nan's injured or killed in the process!

Fortunately, Jing-nan's girlfriend Nancy offers some counterweight to this tendency of Peggy's. But the kidnapping turns out to involve gangs, money, business ... and the politics of Taiwan, which holds a very uncomfortable position in terms of mainland China. And oh yes, since it's Peggy Lee's family at stake, this will be a media circus as well.

Lin's plotting has tightened over his career, and he's now adept in twisting his crime fiction in marvelous ways that incorporate almost as much humor (in mystery, we call it "capers") as the master Donald E. Westlake -- while winding into the plot the tensions of native, aboriginal, mainland, island, in lively and quickly grasped strands of added tension. Best of all are his characters: I wished Jing-nan and Nancy lived a lot closer (although I don't think I'd want to have a lot to do with Jing-nan's employees, whose skills extend beyond the kitchen in somewhat scary ways).

I enjoyed book 2 in this series, Incensed, almost as much. Although there's no need to read the earlier books before 99 WAYS TO DIE, it's a lot of fun to catch up with Lin's narratives, and I think I'll add number 1, Ghost Month, to my shelf, for the pleasure of such good reading.

Published by Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press, which continues to gather great additions to international crime fiction.

 PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Story Collections to Savor, John Sandford, Soho Crime, D. P. Lyle

There's something about the on-rushing holiday season that makes a good collection of short stories especially welcome -- a way to grab some entertainment in a small pocket of time, a chance to savor the compact and intense writing of an already favorite author or sample an unfamiliar one, and at its best, a way to place the heavy demands of the American end-of-year culture back into perspective.

So I'm delighted to have three interesting collections to describe. I hope you'll take advantage of the season and dip in.

First -- because the editor is among the top crime fiction authors of our time, and because his introduction is so significant -- consider THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2017, edited by the inimitable John Sandford. Author of some 40 novels, best known for his "Prey" series (it started with Rules of Prey about 1989), Sandford also has a gift few authors can boast: He can write compellingly ABOUT writing. Here, from his introduction, are some guidelines for the ideal short story:

The story must be tight and well written; a novel can take a few fumbles without much damage, but a short story really suffers from them.

The opening must be catchy and quick and set a mood -- the story should be rolling with the first line. No space here for the dark and stormy night. ... [He quotes from a story by C. J. Box.]

Scene-setting should be integral to the story, part of the fabric rather than long blocks of exposition. The scene-setting ideally should contribute to the mood and texture of the story. [This, he illustrates with a PI -- that is, private investigator -- story from Charles John Harper.]

Now, we get to character. The physical description of the characters is critical, and what the reader sees in this physical description should tell us much about the character's personality. There's a reason for that: it creates an immediate image in the reader's mind, so that laborious explication isn't necessary [Fedora, double-breasted suit, smoking Lucky Stroke Green? Or an excerpt from Dan Bevacqua's story of a thin man with an orange beard and a tattoo over each eyebrow.]

And finally: there has to be some resolution. You can't just end a short story; you have to wind it up. 

Sandford's picks for the collection -- drawn from a larger pool provided by Otto Penzler -- also include stories by Jeffrey Deaver, Brendan DuBois, Loren Estleman, Craig Johnson, William Kent Krueger, and Joyce Carol Oates, among others. They are all over the map (and timeline), and they demonstrate the many delicious flavors of suspense, risk, complexity, and satisfaction that a mystery story can best serve up. Yumm.

Should you happen to be frustrated by today's phrases that carefully edge around the religious roots of year-end festivals, here's balm for your wounds: THE USUAL SANTAS, a bluntly Christmas-focused collection from the always inspiring Soho Crime unit of Soho Press, with an introduction by British crime fiction leader Peter Lovesey. Lovesey's intro chants gleefully the wide range of mystery types included here: from cyber criminals to Sherlock Holmes, and from dark noir to tender kindness to deep mysteries of life and death (including a ghost story).

If you're already savoring some of the Soho Crime authors, this collection is like a dessert buffet. Recognize any of these names? Helene Tursten, Mick Herron, Martin Limón, Timothy Hallinan, Teresa Dovalpage, Mette Ivie Harrison, Colin Cotterill, Ed Lin, Stuart Neville, Ted Goldberg, Henry Chang, James R. Benn, Lene Kaaberbøl & Agnete Friis, Sujita Massey, Gary Corby, Cara Black, Stephanie Barron, and of course Lovesey himself ... I was drooling just from the Contents page, mentally rehearsing the locations from Thailand to Chinatown, England and Ireland, Utah, Scandinavia ... and timelines that include Ancient Greece as well as World War II.

I haven't yet reviewed Sujita Massey -- her first Soho Crime book comes out soon though, so I will -- and I was briefly stumped by Teresa Dovalpage, a Cuban writer whose first Soho book wasn't crime fiction. But in 2018 the press brings out her first mystery, featuring the characters introduced here, a great chance to taste the work ahead of time.

Don't expect me to say my favorites; there is still time to re-read the collection in the holiday mode, and I will probably change my mind at least twice more. Every one of these stories is worth multiple readings. I might have to give several copies as gifts!

Last in this group is a collection that's not intended to be mystery/crime fiction, but happens to be edited by -- with a story by -- an expert teacher in the field, D. P. Lyle. The books is called IT'S ALL IN THE STORY -- CALIFORNIA and is an "anthology of short fiction" from the Southern California Writers Association. The level of work is uneven, but it's interesting to see the wide range of approaches among this gathering of Golden State scribblers. It's not a pick for crime fiction readers (unless you are a "completist" in terms of Lyle). But if you have a Golden State itch, this will provide a good scratch, with appearances by William Randolph Hearst and by San Francisco's Russian immigrants, as well as mention of San Jan Capistrano. And of course the gold rush!

Wishing you many moments to read in the upcoming months. It will surely add some spice -- and suspense! -- to the season's special treats.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

If You Can't Visit Taiwan Yourself, Pick Up INCENSED from Ed Lin

Native New Yorker Ed Lin is of both Taiwanese and Chinese descent. His first series of crime novels was set in Manhattan, and it was good. But the newest series, starting with Ghost Month and now INCENSED, is set in Taiwan -- and it's even better.

Jing-nan has his own restaurant stall in Taipei's Night Market, and with his sense of excellent cuisine (even if simple in concept) and dramatic presentation, he's making an excellent living for himself and his kitchen partners. And he's entirely part of this local culture, even if he does pull on an alter ego he calls "Johnny" when he's doing American-style pandering to customers.

So as the Mid-Autumn Festival arrives, Jing-nan is just as committed to reconnecting with family and prioritizing those relationships as anyone else around him, even though he has a bit of time in America in his own past. When his uncle Big Eye, a criminal sort, seeks his help with 16-year-old Mei-ling, a rebellious daughter (and Jing-nan's cousin), he can't really say no ... and Big Eye has ways to make sure of that!

But Mei-ling's got her own agenda, and when Jing-nan thinks he's got her tidily installed in a job and apartment, he's kidding himself. Soon he's involved in a series of crime-related capers that reveal to him more of his uncle's way of life (and family debts) than he ever wanted to know about.

Nor is his own life a quiet peaceful one lately, considering what his girlfriend Nancy is up to:

When my cousin excused herself "to go piss," I told Nancy about my gangster uncle, the gambling den in the sugarcane field, the shootout and the crazy temple. She told me that she had joined a protest group that was going to storm a government building and occupy the space.

We were each surprised the other wasn't.

When we hit the street the full weight of my exhaustion fell upon me. I staggered to the MRT subway system while Nancy escorted Mei-ling back to her apartment. From there Nancy would walk south through Da'an Park to the university and go on plotting revolution.

As social revolution, teen rebellion, and gangster craziness spin together, Jing-nan's life takes a risky series of racing jumps and twists.

It's all fun, and a great way to get a taste of Taiwan from the inside. My one hang-up about the book was in terms of Lin's choice to write the narrative as if it were being translated -- slightly stilted with a choppy feel to it. I'm betting this American-born author's spoken English is a lot more fluid, and that this is a literary device to pull the story out of New York and over to Taiwan. It works -- but it's an acquired taste, and you may need to bear with it for a while, until the plot thickens and the pages turn on their own. Fun reading, and a great journey into international mystery -- from Soho Crime, of course!

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.