Steven Wu's Book Reviews: Chinatown Beat (Henry Chang)

Henry Chang's Chinatown Beat is less an actual mystery novel and more an introduction to Chang's hard-noir interpretation of New York's Chinatown. For Chang, Chinatown is not a quaint ethnic enclave of cheap groceries and superb restaurants. It's instead a claustrophobic, self-destructive ecosphere of crime, violence, and trapped lives.

One of those lives belongs to NYPD Detective Jack Yu, who grew up in Chinatown, tried to escape by joining the police force, but -- in an ironic twist that feeds his own anger over the stereotypes that seem to define his life -- has been reassigned to the Chinatown district. Jack is the ostensible protagonist, if the book's cover is to be believed, but in fact his story (an investigation into a serial rapist) is only one of several strands in Chinatown Beat, and probably the least interesting.

A more gripping plotline describes the dangerous love triangle between Uncle Four, a triad boss; Mona, his beautiful but unhappy mistress; and Johnny Wong, Uncle Four's lowly driver. Their relationship eventually extends beyond New York, in one of the novel's less plausible moves, but it nonetheless serves as a nice parable for the warring forces of need and distaste that connect each of the characters to the idea of Chinatown: they won't live anywhere else, but they can't survive here.

Although Jack's investigation can't compete with the fireworks of this love triangle, as a character he does provide a unique emotional viewpoint. Jack sees himself and his hometown with the eyes of an outsider but the instincts of a native. The result of this divided personality is a deep and confused anger: at the outside world, for its racist views of Chinese-Americans; at the Chinatown Chinese, for stubbornly holding themselves apart; at non-Chinatown Chinese, for abandoning their roots. Jack, of course, has ties to each of these groups. Unsurprisingly, he wraps up his investigations but not his conflicting emotions when the novel closes.

So Chang provides an interesting protagonist and a dark, colorful world. But my enjoyment of the novel was hampered by my general distaste for noir -- especially when it is as unrelenting as it is in Chinatown Beat. Chang's failure to develop his plots with the care that he lavishes on his setting also hurts. I can only imagine that Chang's second book, Year of the Dog, will be an improvement: the payoff for his setup here.