The Borrowed
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A legendary detective uncovers Hong Kong's darkest crimes: "An ambitious narrative brilliantly executed . . . What an achievement!" (John Burdett, author of Bangkok 8).
From award-winning author Chan Ho-kei, The Borrowed tells the story of Kwan Chun-dok, a detective who's worked in Hong Kong fifty years. Across six decades of Hong Kong's volatile history, the narrative follows Kwan through the Leftist Riot of 1967, when a bombing plot threatens many lives; the conflict between the HK Police and ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) in 1977; the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989; the Handover in 1997; and the present day of 2013, when Kwan is called on to solve his final case, the murder of a local billionaire, in a modern Hong Kong that increasingly resembles a police state.
Along the way we meet Communist rioters, ultra-violent gangsters, pop singers enmeshed in the high-stakes machinery of star-making, and a people always caught in the shifting balance of political power, whether in London or Beijing.
Tracing a broad historical arc, The Borrowed reveals just how closely everything is connected, how history repeats itself, and how we have come full circle to repeat the political upheaval and societal unrest of the past. It is a gripping, brilliantly constructed novel from a talented new voice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Retired detective Kwon Chun-dok, the Sherlock Holmes like hero of this ambitious episodic crime novel set in Hong Kong from Chan (The Man Who Sold the World), is on his deathbed in 2013, working on a murder case with the aid of his mentee, Insp. Sunny Lok. Subsequent sections, introduced in reverse chronological order, focus on the infamous triads of Hong Kong organized crime (in 2003), the transfer of sovereignty from the U.K. to China (in 1997), the Tiananmen Square riots (in 1989), and more. Trained in England, the brilliant Chun-dok has been a great success, "silently filling a glorious page of the history of Hong Kong policing." The mysteries he solves, as clever as they may be, can feel a bit old-fashioned. The author's real goal is to tell a history of modern Hong Kong, as Chan explains in his afterword. As a "social narrative" of the city, to use his phrase, the story is fascinating.
