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Henry Chang

Chinatown Beat Hardcover – 23 April 2007

by Henry Chang (Author)

63 ratings

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“Here’s a dark slice of New York’s Chinatown that most of us...have probably never seen. Henry Chang takes us on an unforgettable guided tour of its lower depths. In a field awash with pallid noir thrillers, this one is the real thing. A genuine winner.”—Herbert H. Lieberman, author of City of the Dead and Shadow Dancers “A dramatic evocation of the exotic. . . . More rewarding than a trip to Chinatown.”—Qin Xiaolong, author of Death of a Red Herione Detective Jack Yu grew up in Chinatown. Some of his friends are criminals now; some are dead. Jack has just been transferred to his old neighborhood, where 99 percent of the cops are white. Unlike the others, confused by the residents who speak another language even when they’re speaking English, Jack knows what’s going on. He is confronted with a serial rapist who preys on young Chinese girls. Then Uncle Four, an elderly and respected leader of the charitable Hip Ching Society and member of the Hong Kong-based Red Circle Triad, is gunned down. Jack learns that benevolent Uncle Four had a gorgeous young mistress imported from Hong Kong. And she is missing. To solve these crimes, Jack turns to an elderly fortune teller, an old friend of his, in addition to employing modern police methods. This debut mystery power-fully conveys the sights, sounds, and smells of Chinatown, as well as the attitudes of its inhabitants.

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Product details

Publisher : Soho Press Inc (23 April 2007)
Language : English
Hardcover : 204 pages
ISBN-10 : 1569474370
ISBN-13 : 978-1569474372
Dimensions : 13.97 x 2.54 x 20.32 cm

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63 ratings

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Customer reviews

5 star		23%
4 star		28%
3 star		25%
2 star		14%
1 star		11%

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George

Interesting

Reviewed in France on 3 May 2020

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Reading it today I found two points of interest. A)The action evolves early 90's and the Chinese community in nyk has developed and b)for a foreign reader it is very enlightening both for the mafia way of running business and the way of feeling being Chinese and having all other communities considering you lowest class citizen irrespective your real level of education or background.These two points I found more interesting than the plot.

Yang Zhao

Great book shouldn't be dimissed.

Reviewed in the United States on 7 July 2016

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I don't think I have read enough crime fictions and detective novels to give 5 stars to Henry Chang's book. In my mind this book deserves 5 stars. I grew up in a Literary family that produced several renowned modern day Chinese poets and writers. Grandma's house's most priced possessions are the books. Ironically I never enjoyed reading books. Perhaps the education system of China started me off on the wrong foot. I've always read books by counting pages. Reading book has been a task for me rather enjoyment. This year I crossed over into the beginning of the late 30s and suddenly I found myself embracing books. I was introduced to Charles Bukowski and I followed the author's literary alter ego Henry Chinaski through 5 books and enjoyed each one of them in just a month and half. I devoured books and rather to count pages I am finally inside the story, to become the character, and wanting to know more. I took a break for Bukowski and I thought about giving NYC Chinatown Author Henry Chang a shot. I never met him in person but I've met many of our mutual friends on Facebook. Many of them are old timers who grew up in Chinatown and his Chinatown fictions must have reality in them and I'm sure the old timers bleed stories like detective Jack Yu. This is my first detective novel and definitely ain't be my last. I think I've found another literary hero to follow. I want to hear more Chinatown crime stories told through Detective Jack Yu. I have always been fascinated by the Chinese underworld from watching all those fast paced, sex and violence filled hongkong triad stories with lessons taught in blood about honor, ritual, respect, and tradition. After I adapted the author's writing style I found his articulation to be smooth and clever. The dialogue mixed with Chinese street smarts and Chinese slang and vulgarity, the corruption and betrayal, racism and discrimination, the bias and the stereotype. This book echoed the Asianscape reality of the recent controversial case of former officer Peter Liang. This story offered realistic perspective on the mentality of Chinese living in NYC. In the story there are no real winners. Why? Well I recommend you to read it and find out.

4 people found this helpful

Wen Luo

A jaded man still trying to do good

Reviewed in the United States on 18 November 2019

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Great story, a must read. Especially if you're a Asian American who grew up working class.

There's a lot of criticisms of this book and those criticisms are fair because a lot of readers don't understand this book. However that's largely because they don't understand the authors perspective or his lived experience thus other reviewers can't understand it. Growing up in Chinatown in NYC as a Asian American myself, all the characters felt familiar to me and the struggles felt familiar to me. The language was familiar and way of communicating was familiar.

The protagonist Jack Yu is a cop and a man struggling to reconcile his duty to his community, who he wants to be, and his identity. But he's under fire from people in his community who have been harassed by the police, from the racism he receives from his co workers and American society at large. Despite all this and the nihilism that creeps into his life, he tries to be a good man.

B. McEwan

Very good police procedural

Reviewed in the United States on 20 November 2010

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I have always loved visiting NYC's original Chinatown in Manhattan, so I really enjoyed reading about the Chinese-American detective Jack Yu. The son of immigrants, Jack was born and raised in Chinatown but no longer lives there. He considers himself a modern American and resists attempts by his elderly father to behave more traditionally, in keeping with Chinese culture and values. When his father dies, Jack goes back to Chinatown to clean out the old man's apartment and while there gets drawn into a murder case involving some of his old neighborhood buddies. The story takes off from there and moves along pretty well, although I expect that author Henry Chang will become more adept at plotting as his writing career moves along.

The real value of Chinatown Beat is not the plot in any case. It's the wealth of interesting detail about the lives of the people who live in what can arguably be called New York City's most intriguing neighborhood. Assuming that Chang's material is authentic (and there is no reason not to), readers get a peek into the workings of the Chinatown gangs known as tongs, which compete with one another in a variety of criminal enterprises, including smuggling, drug dealing and gambling. We also get a look at the way most people in Chinatown live, which is to say as upstanding citizens who work hard and comply with the laws just as most other New Yorkers do. I found Chang's descriptions of the daily lives of 'regular' people especially interesting, such as the old women who gather in Columbus Park to tell fortunes, the wealthy housewives who spend their afternoons gambling at private mah jong parties or the man who runs a wholesale bean curd business.

Also striking are Chang's depictions of the racism and discrimination that many Chinese Americans continue to suffer, from within their own ethnic group as well as from outsiders. The story's hero, Jack Yu, is a man without a community. As the only Asian detective in his precinct, he doesn't he feel he fits in with his fellow officers and as a Chinatown 'expatriate' he is now rejected by many of the family and friends he left behind. By the novel's end Jack has more or less come to terms with his otherness, but readers are left with the idea that New York's great melting pot is truly a myth and the beautiful mosaic that supposedly replaced it is less lovely than we may have thought.

2 people found this helpful

amf0001

the most vibrant character was Chinatown itself

Reviewed in the United States on 16 November 2010

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I wanted to like this more than I did. I written that a lot lately... This was a free kindle download of a debut novel and the author's inexperience shows, with uneven pacing and plotting.

It's certainly evocative, you get a sense of the emptiness and loneliness of these men's lives, either trying to go straight or falling in with the tong. Chinatown in New York is an area I know well enough, I live in walking distance from it, and like wandering around, but it is another country, plenty of people there don't speak a word of English and this was a glimpse into their lives, I was just sad that their lives were so bleak. (well it's a noir novel, what did I expect?) the mystery held no energy, I didn't care, and the book definitely bogged down in the middle. I wanted the killer to get away with it. I didn't care about most of the other characters. The most vibrant character was Chinatown itself and she was well described.

I don't know if I am longing to go read the next one in the series, but I read this from beginning to end and there were some interesting notions in it, so it gets a 3 star rating from me.

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Chinatown Beat Hardcover – 23 April 2007

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