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Year of the Dog
A Detective Jack Yu Investigation
Book Two of the Chinatown Trilogy

by Henry Chang



      Promoted from the fifth precinct (the Chinatown Precinct) to the ninth precinct, Detective Jack Yu is accustomed to dealing with multicultural scenarios.  While the Thanksgiving Day Parade is going on Jack contemplates his mixed thoughts about the holiday seasons in New York City.  There really are two cities here—one rich, one poor, each spiritually, if not physically, segregated from one another.

The death of an entire Chinese family, presumably a murder-suicide, brings this case close to home for Jack Yu.  A delivery boy goes missing in Chinatown and turns up dead.  Then a gang shooting occurs on the streets of Chinatown with numerous fatalities.  Needless to say Detective Jack Yu has his hands full with all the crime going down in Chinatown.  Even after he has been reassigned to the ninth precinct, the 0-five (the Chinatown Precinct) continues to pull Jack back in.  Jack Yu, American born, grew up in Chinatown and knows it well.

A bookie struggles with lung cancer and facing the end of his life—yet his last act on this earth is one from a huge and giving heart.  Then it is the New Year—the Year of the Pig, the last in the lunar cycle.

Year of the Dog is a wonderfully written work of fiction.  It is not a mystery in the sense of whodunit but more of a story of the underground and their lives (the bookie, the gangbangers, the thugs, the thieves) in Chinatown.  Year of the Dog is a fast-paced, engrossing novel to read.

The Book

Soho Press
November 1, 2008
Hardcover
978-1-56947-515-7
Fiction
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Excerpt
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The Reviewer

Connie Harris
Reviewed 2009
NOTE:
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