Jing-nan, owner of a popular night market food stall, is framed for a string of high-profile murders—why does it seem like he's always the one left holding the skewer? The fourth entry to Ed Lin's Taipei mystery series is as hilarious and poignant as ever. Taipei is rocked by the back-to-back murders of a recent lottery winner and a police captain just as the city is preparing to host the big Austronesian Cultural Festival, which has brought in indigenous performers from all around the Pacific Rim to the island nation of Taiwan. Jing-nan, the proprietor of Unknown Pleasures, a popular food stand at Taipei’s largest night market, is thrown into the intrigue. Is he being set up to take the rap, or will he be the next victim? The fallout could jeopardize Jing-nan’s relationship with his girlfriend, Nancy, who is herself soon caught up in the drama, and is increasingly annoyed at Jing-nan’s failure to propose to her....

Waylaid is the story of a Chinese American boy who struggles to grow up in the grip of an overcharged sexual environment. With a daily routine that involves renting out rooms to johns and hookers at his parents' sleazy hotel, the narrator loses his grip on concepts of friendship, family and childhood. As he pursues his all-consuming quest to lose his virginity, issues of race, class and sex cripple his sense of self-worth. It is a story told with a Gen-X-style bleak humor that doesn't pander to conventional notions of immigrant narrative. Waylaid doesn't cut a wide swath through Asian American literature. It is a switchblade in the gut to stories of over-achievement and success in America that ignore the human cost.This is the eBook edition of Waylaid, originally published in print form in May 2002.

This epic of Chinatown Noir is the riveting sequel to This Is a BustSet in New York City in 1976, Snakes Can't Run finds NYPD detective Robert Chow still haunted by the horrors of his past and relegated to tedious undercover work. When the bodies of two undocumented Chinese men are found under the Brooklyn Bridge underpass, Chow is drawn into the case. Most of the officers in his precinct are concerned with a terrorist group targeting the police, but Chow's investigation puts him on the trail of a ring of ruthless human smugglers who call themselves the snakeheads.As Chow gets closer to solving the murder, dangerous truths about his own family's past begin to emerge.Steeped in retro urban attitude, and ripe with commentary on minorities' roles in American society, this gritty procedural will appeal to fans of George Pelecanos and S.J. Rozan.

In this thrilling sequel to the highly acclaimed Snakes Can't Run, detective Robert Chow must wrestle with his own morality to solve a murder, set against the backdrop of gritty Chinatown following the Vietnam War.It's the fall of 1976, and New York's Chinatown is in turmoil over news that Mao's daughter is seeking asylum in America. Vietnam vet Robert Chow is now a detective-in-training, and he is thrilled when his girlfriend, Lonnie, scores a once-in-a-lifetime interview with the Chinese representative of Mao's daughter. But hours after their meeting, the man is found dead.Lonnie, the last person to see him alive, is the main suspect. The police are restless to close the case, and as Lonnie is subjected to increasing amounts of intimidation, Robert is tempted to reach into his own bag of dirty tricks to protect her.Will Chow stay on the right side of the law, or will his loyalty to Lonnie provoke him to turn to darker methods? Find out in this exciting...

In Taipei, Taiwan, the kidnapping of a Mainlander billionaire throws national media into a tizzy—not least because of the famous victim's vitriolic anti-immigration politics. Jing-nan has known Peggy Lee, a bullying frenemy who runs her family's huge corporation, since high school. Peggy's father has been kidnapped, and the ransom the kidnappers are demanding is not money but IP: a high-tech memory chip that they want to sell in China. Jing-nan feels sorry for Peggy until she starts blackmailing him into helping out. Peggy is worried the kidnappers' deadline will pass before the police are able to track down the chip. But when the reluctant Jingnan tries to help, he finds himself deeper and deeper in trouble with some very unsavory characters—the most unsavory of whom might be the victim himself.

In Taiwan, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for prioritizing family. When 25-year-old Jing-nan's gangster uncle, Big Eye, asks a favor, Jing-nan can't exactly say no, especially because two goons are going to follow him around to make sure he gets it done right. The favor is this: Big Eye's 16-yearold daughter, Mei-ling, has a biker boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks—in Big Eye's gangster opinion—and Big Eye wants Jing-nan to bring her to Taipei, away from the bad influences, and straighten her out.It doesn't take Jing-nan long to discover Mei-ling is even more trouble than the average bratty, rebellious teenage girl. She's been spoiled rotten and doesn't know how to take no for an answer. She has her father's thugs wrapped around her finger and quickly becomes the miniature dictator of Jingnan's life. But Mei-ling is also hiding a secret—one that puts her in harm's way. If he wants to save his cousin from her own demons, he has to figure out the...

This Is a Bust, the second novel by award-winning author Ed Lin, turns the conventions of hard-boiled pulp stories on their head by exploring the unexotic and very real complexities of New York City's Chinatown, circa 1976, through the eyes of a Chinese-American cop. A Vietnam vet and an alcoholic, Robert Chow's troubles are compounded by the fact that he's basically community-relations window-dressing for the NYPD: he's the only Chinese American on the Chinatown beat, and the only police officer who can speak Cantonese, but he's never assigned anything more challenging than appearances at store openings or community events. Chow is willing to stuff down his feelings and hang tight for a promotion to the detective track, despite the community unrest that begins to roil around him. But when his superiors remain indifferent to an old Chinese woman's death, he is forced to take matters into his own hands. This Is a Bust is at once a murder mystery, a noir homage and a...