Cast the characters in the book you’re reading:

So a recap of the books I was reading

The Chalice- Nancy Bilyeau

Cote de Pablo from NCIS would make an excellent Joanna Stafford. Beautiful, with dark hair,  intensely smart and a force to be reckoned with.

The others in that book are tougher. I can’t think of anyone quite scary enough to play Gardiner. Gertrude sort of made me picture Kristin Chenoweth, but I’m not completely sold there. Brother Edmund, I also have no idea. My picture of him was more about a general sense of broad shoulders under his robe, a rough voice, maybe a beard, rather than clearly picturing his face.

Ghost Hero by S.J. Rozan. I told Dad about the casting challenge, and he was stumped too. We both have a really clear picture of Lydia Chin, knowing that she’s Chinese American, not terribly tall, smart, sarcastic, and fierce. So I was trying to think of actresses. Lucy Liu crossed my mind and nope… I don’t think she’s easy enough to underestimate at first glance. And my picture of Lydia Chin is that she doesn’t look like a force to be reckoned with, but then you see her in action. I think the actress that could play her should be someone who isn’t already a celebrity.

“DeSilva knows his crooks, his snobs, and his working joes, knows what they do and how they talk about it. He also knows the newspaper business in all its sunset glory, and he’s intimately acquainted with the nets of power, crime, and money woven into the fabric of Rhode Island. This is a series I’ll be following.”

Cliff Walk, the sequel to my Edgar Award-winning Rogue Island, has received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The new novel officially goes on sale Tuesday and can be ordered in advance here.

Lydia Chin knows nothing about art, Chinese or otherwise.  Jeff Dunbar claims to be an art collector and the art he wants to collect is that of Chau Chun, “referred to as Chau ‘Gwai Ying Shung’ – Ghost Hero Chau.”  Dunbar is in search of paintings that are rumored to be in New York City; no one has seen them.  If they exist, each of the three paintings would be worth more than half a million dollars.  Chau was a painter in China who got caught up in the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in 1989.  Witnesses have described Chau as one of the people in the square who were killed when the army opened fire on the demonstrators.  If there are previously unseen paintings that have been smuggled out of China, it is a coup for the art world and a possible disaster for the country into which the paintings were brought.

As far as Dunbar is concerned, he just wants the paintings to add to his collections and he claims he choose Lydia based on her name.  This makes no sense to Lydia since she is sure there are other Chinese private investigators in New York City who actually know something about art.  But, since the investigative team of Chin and Smith do not have any open cases at this time, Lydia accepts the challenge of finding art which may not exist.

When she tells Bill about their new client, Bill decides to call on his friend, Jack Lee, a Chicago born Chinese-American who knows a great deal about art.  In fact, Jack has a Ph.D in Art History with a concentration in Asian Art.  Too drawn to action, Jack couldn’t deal with selling art.  “So now instead of selling art, i corral it . Chase down the lost, stolen or strayed.  Bodyguard a vase on its way someplace.  Check a Bronze’s provenance.  Make sure the dish that comes back from the restorer is the same one that was sent to be restored.”  Jack knows a great deal about Ghost Hero Chau.  He has also been hired to find the rumored paintings of Chau.  When the army came in, Chau stayed with his students, was killed, and became a ghost and a hero.

Rozan writes one of the best and clearest explanation of what happened in Tiananmen Square that can be found anywhere.  She gives the words to Jack.  “The PRC (People’s Republic of China) government admits to two hundred and forty-one people dying by the time Tiananmen was over.  Rioters and hooligans, every one of them, threats to the public order and enemies of the revolution.  But about a thousand more were never heard from again.  The government says they were more rioters and hooligans and they ran away.  Their families say they were killed, but no one’s been able to prove it.  Those people are the ‘ghosts’.  But Chau was one of the two hundred and forty-one.  He’s on the official list, his body was identified, he’s buried in his hometown.”

So why the rumors that Chau is still alive?  Why the rumors that the paintings that no one has yet seen are new if Chau is dead?  Gradually, as the story unfolds, the man becomes more important than his art.  Jack tells Lydia and Bill that his client is Professor Yang who taught at the Beijing Art Institute and was a friend of Chau’s.  He wants Jack to prove the paintings are fakes so they can’t damage Chau’s reputation.  Into the mix comes Anna Yang, an significant artist in her own right.  Anna is married to a dissident poet in China whom she is desperate to have released from prison and brought to the United States.

GHOST HERO is a wonderful tale of lies, stolen identities, Chinese culture, and Chinese politics.  Bill and Lydia are the same interesting characters they always are and Jack Lee is a character whom I hope joins the cast.  Lydia is still dealing with her mother who disapproves of her job and Bill.  Bill casts himself as Vladimir Oblomov, a Russian gangster, who is trying to get information about a speculator in Chinese art, Doug Haig.  Rozan gives Bill plenty of lines delivered in a Coen brothers comic accent that are very funny.  The good guys are decent and honest, the bad guys are as bad as possible in as many ways as possible.

GHOST HERO is the eleventh book in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series.  I have not found one to be better than another; they are all equally entertaining and satisfying.  They do not need to be read in order of publication so begin anywhere but please begin reading the series.  It should not be missed.

The mentions throughout the story of the demonstration in Tiananmen Square are all too familiar.  In early June, 1989, students began a protest in the Square and in the streets surrounding it.  The army moved in to remove several thousand protestors.  The next day, Army tanks approached the square where they were confronted by one man, identity unknown, who stood in front of the lead tank and brought the line to a stop.  His action was broadcast live on television in the west and people were riveted to the screen by the calm courage of the man in the white dress shirt.  We watched, numb, waiting for what was certain to be a bloody confrontation.

From Wikipedia:  “Having successfully brought the column to a halt, the man climbed onto the hull of the buttoned-up lead tank and, after briefly stopping at the driver’s hatch, appeared in video footage of the incident to call into various ports in the tank’s turret. He then climbed atop the turret and seemed to have a short conversation with a crew member at the gunner’s hatch. After ending the conversation, the man alighted from the tank. The tank commander briefly emerged from his hatch, and the tanks restarted their engines, ready to continue on. At that point, the man, who was still standing within a meter or two from the side of the lead tank, leapt in front of the vehicle once again and quickly reestablished the man–tank standoff.  Video footage shows that two figures in blue attire then pulled the man away and disappeared with him into a nearby crowd”.

The government has never released any information about the lone dissident but it is generally believed that he was executed with a few days of the demonstration.  The number of deaths in Tiananmen Square is given as in the hundreds but most of the students were killed on the streets leading from the square.  That number is likely to be in the range of 3000.  No one who watched television that night, anywhere in the western world, will forget the impact of that one young man who, with his grocery bags in his hands, decided to take a stand at that moment, on that day, and paid with his life.  He is believed to have been nineteen years old.

If reading a suspense thriller by David Baldacci is like driving in a new Porsche, reading a private investigator thriller by S. J. Rozan is like riding through the streets of New York City in a turbo-charged go-kart.   You never know what you’re going to bump into!

Rozan writes in a style that is part 1950s detective magazine, part retro (think of Denis Johnson’s Nobody Move), part Miami Vice/Hill Street blues and more than a bit of Batman and Robin.   In order to follow her story you will need to suspend reality or believe in – as does the main character – miracles.

As the story opens our protagonist P. I. Bill Smith receives a mysterious message on his cell phone telling him that his partner and love interest Lydia Chin has been kidnapped.   Smith doesn’t know who’s behind this but he correctly suspects that it’s someone he helped put in prison.   He’s soon provided with a “clue” that leads him to an abandoned building in Manhattan in which he finds a dead girl.   This, naturally, is a set-up.   The NYPD officers arrive just after Smith does and suspect him of murder.   Smith has to fight with and escape from the cops just as he’s about to begin his frantic search for Lydia.

The person who has kidnapped Lydia has set a clock on this “game” of cat and mouse.   Smith must find Lydia before time runs out, because her kidnapper has promised to kill her once the clock reaches double-zero.   Smith needs to figure out who exactly has taken Lydia, and where she’s been taken while he hides from the police and – oh, yes – as new crimes take place and the police suspect him of being the perpetrator.   Smith would have little chance of dealing with this all by himself, but two young assistants come to his rescue and he’s also got a friend inside the NYPD who performs a few of the miracles he needs.

Rozan’s writing style is rapid and breathless.   As the story begins, the reader will likely feel (as with Nobody Moves) that too much is happening too fast.   But if you accept the fact that dramatic events are going to happen every few pages, the read becomes a highly entertaining  and exhilarating one.   If you’re like this reader, you will begin On the Line wondering if you will be able to finish it.   On doing so, you will be calling a bookstore to order one of the nine previously released Bill Smith/Lydia Chin novels.

Recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was received from the publisher.   On the Line was released in a trade paperback version on August 30, 2011.  

“A high-velocity entry in a reliable series.”   Booklist