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Mysteries of the East > Chinese > S. J. Rozan

American, 1950-.

The Lydia Chin novels of S.J. Rozan

Title	Date originally published	eBook available?	In print?
China Trade	1994	No	Yes
Concourse	1995	No	Yes
Mandarin Plaid	1996	No	Yes
No Colder Place	1997	No	Yes
A Bitter Feast	1998	No	Yes
Stone Quarry	1999	No	Yes
Reflecting the Sky	2001	Yes	Yes
Winter and Night	2002	Yes	Yes
The Shanghai Moon	2009	Yes	Yes

Announcements

Next book in series announced by Michael Robert Broschat	4/21/2010 4:29 AM
On the Line will be released in September 2010.

Reviews of Lydia Chin novels

Title

Review text

Review of The Shanghai Moon

The Shanghai Moon is the most recent book in a series by S.J. Rozan featuring a Chinese-American woman who has become a private investigator and her investigative partner, a white American. If this book is an indication of the rest of the series, there is an underlying romantic nature to their relationship, which seems to be a necessary ingredient in most mystery novels.

The relationship (or its expression) was the least satisfying part of this novel to me. In general, the interaction of the two and, especially, Lydia Chin's thoughts on the subject served to make her, at least, rather shallow. Fortunately, she was prone to making brilliant deductions—or was having extremely fortunate hallucinations, and the story marched excitedly along.

The real class of this novel is in its depiction of the background story. When Jews were seeking to get out of Austria and Germany, back before things got really bad for them there, they had few places to flee to. Most countries (including the US) had strict quotas on how many Jews they would accept. One country that did not—probably because it had no real government at the time—was China. Jews flocked by the thousands to China, and especially to Shanghai, the truly international city on China's east coast.

I'd already read about this in Emily Hahn's marvelous memoir of living in China during the 1920s and 1930s—China To Me (1944). But in Rozan's novel, the phenomenon takes on a life and quality that is missing from the Chin/Smith relationship that characterizes this series. The chief element in creating this quality is the set of letters from a young Jewish woman who has been sent to Shanghai with her younger brother, while the parents wait to settle affairs in Austria. They never make it, but the daughter writes letters home, anyway, hoping against hope that what probably happened back in Austria really didn't.

The letters speak of their voyage to Shanghai, during which the young woman meets a sophisticated Chinese man from Shanghai. Through the letters, we see her fall in love with him, and him with her, and we learn of the gracious incorporation of these two refugees into the privileged life of this son of a wealthy family. Privileged and wealthy until the Japanese take over Shanghai and much of China.

The modern mystery is wonderfully interwoven with elements of that tortured past, and as a whole the book is an exciting, satisfying read. When you finish, you feel that you haven't just witnessed a gun-blazing, gangland shootout on Canal St, but something deeper. Something that will stay with you longer than the machinations of the plot.

Recommended.

Review of Winter and Night

There's nothing Chinese about Winter and Night. In fact, the story is narrated by the white partner of Chinese-American Lydia Chin, and Ms Chin provides a stable, caring presence to balance the very emotional state Mr Smith is in during most of the story. There is much about Mr Smith's back story in this book, and that is only being shared with Ms Chin this late in the series.

It's a very exciting story. The focus is the mania a small Northeastern town has for high school football, and how that mania has been passed through generations, and all the bad that mania engenders. I see that a reader comments on Ms Rozan's blog, asking about why she hates football so much. I forget her answer, other than to deny the broad claim, but her criticism is certainly regarding the social effect of a football culture, not the game, itself. And it all has to do with the fact that the way kids grow up has an awful lot to do with how they end up as adults.

We've said in various reviews that so many of these mysteries aren't as important regarding the "mystery," itself, but in their observations along the way of the story development. Although I might normally not recognize the observations, having grown up in the society depicted, reading mysteries set in foreign environments has sensitized me to the phenomenon. I can say—gladly—that, growing up, I did not see the things that Ms Rozan writes about the effect of football on this town, but I can believe it easily. There have been enough reports over the years of excesses in the pursuit of winning, to believe that what she writes is at least possible.

The Smith-Chin relationship is a curious one. The two books I've read are the two most recent in the series, and the characters have an obvious regard for each other that never seems to go "too far," if you know what I mean. The question of whether a man and a woman can have a deeper relationship and still function in a series is an interesting one to ponder.

--Michael Broschat, Aug 2009

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