Harry Bosch is a tunnel rat. He spent his army years exploring the dangerous maze beneath the Vietnam jungle. When he got out, he burrowed into Los Angeles, learning every inch of the city as a police detective.
Now, in Nine Dragons, the 15th hard-boiled Bosch novel, Michael Connelly sends his hero halfway around the world, to Hong Kong, and doesn’t give him any time to dig below the surface while he tries to save the only person in the world he loves.
It’s nerve-wracking — in a good way — to see Bosch out of his element. He makes seemingly small mistakes that lead to life-changing consequences. That would never happen in LA.
It starts, of course, with a murder in the City of Angels. A Chinese liquor store owner is killed, and his death may be connected to the triads, Chinese organized-crime groups. Bosch is on unfamiliar turf in his hometown, before he even boards a plane for the Far East. He’s forced to collaborate with Detective Chu from the Asian Gang Unit, who will translate both language and culture for him.
Like his predecessor Philip Marlowe, Bosch is a loner, both personally and professionally. It isn’t easy to earn his trust, and Chu hasn’t done it.
Harry arrests a triad member, and soon gets a threatening phone call telling him to back off. Then he receives a video e-mail showing his 13-year-old daughter, Maddie, who lives with his ex-wife in Hong Kong, strapped to a chair in a nondescript room.
(Compare this to the first Bosch novel, The Black Echo, in which the cops were constantly using payphones to check in with the office. That was 1992, but it feels like the Middle Ages.)
How did the triads in Hong Kong react to an arrest in Los Angeles so quickly? Could Detective Chu, or someone else in the Asian Gang Unit, have tipped them off? Bosch isn’t taking any chances with his daughter’s life, so he hops on a plane for a day that turns out, with the time difference, to last 39 hours.
There’s plenty of awesome detective work here; maybe too awesome. Zip: Watch Bosch pinpoint the one building in all of Hong Kong where that video was made. Zip zip: Watch him find Maddie’s discarded mobile phone. Despite Bosch’s blunders, everything moves along remarkably quickly.
Connelly has succumbed to the publishing-industry imperative that best-selling writers must crank out not just one book a year, but two or even three. Five months ago, he produced The Scarecrow, about former Los Angeles Times reporter Jack McEvoy.
While there’s pleasure to be had in Nine Dragons, it has less depth and complexity than Connelly’s earlier books. I’m sure I speak for many fans when I say I’d rather read one terrific Connelly novel a year than two pretty good ones.
“China wants to unify with Taiwan at the lowest possible cost, and it currently believes that unification will become easier and less costly as time passes,” wrote Amanda Hsiao (蕭嫣然) and Bonnie Glaser in Foreign Affairs (“Why China Waits”) this month, describing how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is playing the long game in its quest to seize Taiwan. This has been a favorite claim of many writers over the years, easy to argue because it is so trite. Very obviously, if the PRC isn’t attacking Taiwan, it is waiting. But for what? Hsiao and Glaser’s main point is trivial,
Taiwan’s overtaking of South Korea in GDP per capita is not a temporary anomaly, but the result of deeper structural problems in the South Korean economy says Chang Young-chul, the former CEO of Korea Asset Management Corp. Chang says that while it reflects Taiwan’s own gains, it also highlights weakening growth momentum in South Korea. As design and foundry capabilities become more important in the AI era, Seoul risks losing competitiveness if it relies too heavily on memory chips. IMF forecasts showing Taiwan widening its lead over South Korea have fueled debate in Seoul over memory chip dependence, industrial policy and
May 18 to May 24 Gathered on Yangtou Mountain (羊頭山) on Dec. 5, 1972, Taiwan’s hiking enthusiasts formally declared the formation of the “100 Peaks Club” (百岳俱樂部) and unveiled the final list of mountains. Famed mountaineer Lin Wen-an (林文安) led this effort for the Chinese Alpine Association (中華山岳協會). Working with other experienced climbers, he chose 100 peaks above 10,000 feet (3,048m) that featured triangulation points and varied in difficulty and character. The list sparked an alpine hiking craze, inspiring many to take up mountaineering and competing to “conquer” the summits. A common misconception is that the 100 Peaks represent Taiwan’s 100 tallest
Yesterday, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) nominated legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋) as their Taipei mayoral candidate, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) put their stamp of approval on Wei Ping-cheng (魏平政) as their candidate for Changhua County commissioner and former legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has begun the process to also run in Changhua, though she has not yet been formally nominated. All three news items are bizarre. The DPP has struggled with settling on a Taipei nominee. The only candidate who declared interest was Enoch Wu (吳怡農), but the party seemed determined to nominate anyone
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