Murder in China Red

His name is Liu Chiang-hsin: "a mind as sharp as a sword." But "C******n" is the name his friends and contacts use. C******n grew up in Beijing during the Mao era and was traumatized by seeing Red Guards beat his scholar-father and drag him off; never to return. Three decades later, the one woman who managed to penetrate his emotional defenses has been found murdered in the New York Palace Hotel. And C******n won't rest until he finds the killer.

C******n is a 35-year-old private detective living in New York City's East Village. He is unlucky enough to have, as an ex-father-in-law, Manhattan's Chief of Detectives. Worse yet, C******n finds himself in the position of trying to enlist his ex-wife's help in solving the murder of the woman she found in bed with him -- just before their marriage ended.

By using his computer, his fists, his wits, his contacts and his knowledge of the streets, C******n tracks down the murderers. The denouement takes place in Brooklyn's bleak Red Hook area at night among the loading cranes, transit sheds, canine-guarded warehouses and chain-linked fences topped with barbed wire. And, if C******n can prevent the memories of his Beijing boyhood from overwhelming him, he might just have a C******n's chance of coming out alive.