Like many mystery/detective novels China Trade reads easily and quickly. Weighing in at just over 260 pages, it is short enough to read in a sitting or two, but long enough to develop its characters and plot while holding the reader’s attention. As first novels go, it is a very good one.Because it is a whodunit, the protagonists take us on a web of interrelated clues and interviews as they try to solve a theft. Because the theft was of valuable Chinese porcelain, we are introduced to a world of art historians, collectors, curators, and museums; always obsessive and often semi-shady. Because the porcelain was stolen from a neighborhood Chinese cultural center and museum, the story centers on Chinatown and those who live in it. Because it is a Chinese-run organization, they wish to save face and instead of informing the NYC police bring in a Chinese-American PI.Lydia Chin (full name Chin Ling Wan-Ju) is a local woman who has been running her own solo PI office for six years. She lives with her mother in the heart of Chinatown and maintains an office nearby (to satisfy both Chinese and non-Chinese clients). When necessary she calls in a friend (or vice-versa), PI Bill Smith. Bill is older, larger, and (we are told) more successful. He is also smitten with her – which she keeps at arms length. Bill is also something of an art and music lover, so he has contacts with dealers and those who might have friends whose friends deal in objects d’art whose provenance is not entirely firm. Together they use their wits and skills to solve cases.In this novel, what begins as a simple (yet mysterious) theft develops into something seedier and nastier. I’m going to avoid any real spoilers, but since the crime and majority of the action takes place in Lydia’s world-with-in-a-world enclave, her past and present are tightly woven into this story. There is a real blast-from-the-past that affects her and the solution.The author has populated this story with some of the classic tropes of mystery, detective, and Chinese fiction: there are clues (one nicely placed one that had me straining to remember where it was), there is the cop friend (another Chinese-American woman) who gives the PI just enough rope to get further in trouble, the elderly wise man (the local Chinese Herbalist), and gangs (but no Tongs), and her disapproving mother. None of it seems heavy-handed; in fact, it is blended together in a way that keeps the story fresh and fast-paced.This was an enjoyable book with very likable characters. I know that it is the first in a now-lengthy series and will happily devour more of them in the future. There is a lot of food in this book – but considering that the Chinese often greet each other with the question, “Chir Fan?” (Have you eaten?), that’s not surprising. What was surprising was find one glaring typo where the name of a bar was changed from “Dusty’s” to “Rusty’s” only three sentences later (it was “Dusty’s everywhere else.) Despite that, this is a genuine, export-quality book valued at Four (4.0) Full Stars.
I've had S.J. Rozan on my TBR pile for years and now I wish I hadn't waited so long. China Trade is the first in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, set in New York City. Chin is already established as an investigator (6 years in this line of work, she reminds her mother) when she is called in to investigate a theft of rare porcelains donated to a small museum in Chinatown. The porcelains were donated by Mrs. Blair soon after her husband died, who collected them over many years. Only two crates of the donation have disappeared, and Chin is determined to find them. As she investigates she discovers some odd arrangements of the gangs that run Chinatown, including the intrusion of a new one, Main Street Boys, into the territory of the Golden Dragons, who until recently covered the area of the museum. According to Dr. Browning, who had been cataloging the gift, little information exists about the stolen porcelains since they were purchases made just before Mr. Blair died. Chin is called in partly with the approval of her brother, a lawyer, but as things progress he turns out to be less supportive than he had seemed in the beginning. Tim is one of five brothers, and the one most at odds with Lydia.This is a fascinating look at life inside a Chinese family in Chinatown. Lydia lives with her mother, follows most of the protocol for an unmarried daughter, seeks help and healing from the revered Grandfather Gao, dines often on Chinese food, among other cuisines, and fends off the gentle but persistent advances of her partner, Bill. Chin has the required contacts in the police department through her childhood friend Mary. Both she and Bill open doors to the white world, and Chin links cultures and crimes in her dogged pursuit of the guilty.The mystery is complex, full of surprises and satisfying solutions.
Do You like book China Trade (1995)?
I'm rereading the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mysteries; I decided to read all the Chins in order, followed by all the Smiths (as I just finished the most recent Smith, On the Line)I'm blown away. . .again. This is not what one expects of a first novel (especially, sneers the English major who couldn't write fiction if her life depended on it, of the first novel of an ARCHITECT!).The characters of both Lydia and Bill are solidly established with little apparent effort early on in the book--providing a good stepping-off point for Bill's narration of the second book.The plot is coherent and engrossing. All subsidiary characters are convincingly fleshed out (yeah, ok, to the degree appropriate to their narrative functions). Setting and background (NYC's Chinatown, art museums, police department)are established cleanly and persuasively. I go back every time expecting a "first novel" effect--and am always stunned not to see it anywhere. Why the hell was this not even NOMINATED for a "best first novel?"Oh, yeah. The eclaircissement moment with Dr. Browning has made me want both to laugh and to cry every time I have read the book-he remains one of the most painfully remembered characters in this entire series, particularly notable for speaking convincingly in elegantly grammatical language. That is a triumph on Ms. Rozan's part that I'm not sure is obvious to the casual reader. Anyway, I really hope he came out of the entire schemozzle well. . .but I'm afraid that may not be the case.
—Kathryn McCary
CHINA TRADE - VG+Rozen, S.J. - 1st in Lydia Chin/Bill Smith seriesAsian-American private investigator Lydia Chin knows New York City's Chinatown, its people, and its ways as no outsider ever could. So when the Chinatown Museum is robbed of a set of rare export porcelains, Lydia is hired to recover them quietly - a task that quickly proves more difficult than it at first appears. Maneuvering gently around the local gangs who control the streets of Chinatown, Lydia tackles an investigation that takes her - and her sometimes partner Bill Smith - far beyond the borders of Chinatown into the equally cryptic world of art and collecting, and upstart outer-borough gangs trying to gain a toe hold in the closed world of Chinatown. I really enjoyed this. Great, different protagonists, wonderful sense of place. The author clearly loves NYC. Lydia is a fascinating blend of old and new Chinese culture and her mother is a hoot. This is definitely a series to follow.
—LJ
I APPROVE OF THIS REVIEW. (Just read the new one, which was very different in approach, but works out well in the end and actually made me laugh out loud once.)
—Supriya
