The trail of two missing Chinese children shouldn't lead to a slave market, and Simeon Grist should still be languishing somewhere in academia, not sleuthing his way through Los Angeles. Blunt wit and copious running gags have fueled this first-rate series ( Skin Deep , etc.), whose latest entry features a mostly Asian cast, including Grist's former lover Eleanor, whose brother's two children have been abducted. Horace, the father, promptly vanishes into Chinatown after them, and a beloved uncle gradually emerges as the chief suspect. The kids turn up later, but Horace is still AWOL. Simeon then stumbles into the world of Charlie Wah, who struggles with his English but more than masters the art of killing. Before long, Grist has saved a young Vietnamese boy (then gotten him blind drunk), enlisted a few other unsavory deadbeats and set forth to free a ship full of slaves, with one of the chief slavemasters looking more and more like Eleanor's aunt. The author's relentless quest for wit means that no opportunity for a smart-ass one-liner is ever willingly squandered, and some latitude is definitely required from the more single-minded clue-hunters, as well as from the squeamish, who may find Grist's first grisly encounter with Wah unnecessarily brutal. A not quite up-to-par addition to the Grist canon.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Hard-boiled Simeon Grist (Incinerator, etc.) now rushes in to help longtime love Eleanor Chan when her niece and nephew are kidnapped for what seem (to Grist) inscrutable Chinese reasons--but clearly the Chan family knows something and clearly it involves Uncle Lo, also missing. As Grist searches for the kids, he bumps into two separate illegal alien stories: one concerning Uncle Lo and aged Esther Summerson, a retired missionary; the other concerning work slaves indentured to the likes of sadist Charlie Wah. The kids are returned, but Grist has to find their dad, Horace, who's gone in search of Uncle Lo, thereby putting both himself and Grist in the path of various Chinese protection societies and Vietnamese thugs and Thai prostitutes. To break up the various slave rings, Grist puts together a black gang and, with split-second derring-do, waylays payoffs to the Chinese, liberates the slaves, and overcomes a spot of torture meant to cripple him. Memorable for a baby-faced Vietnamese assassin, a dateless teenager, a gruesome double murder, and Hallinan's droll depiction of the Asian communities warring in California. If you can handle the rough stuff: a lippy, fast-paced read. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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