Flower Net
From AwardAnnals
| Book: | Flower Net: A Thriller |
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| Author: | Lisa See |
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| Publisher: | Harpercollins |
First the U.S. ambassador’s son is discovered entombed in a frozen lake in Beijing. Then the son of a powerful Chinese politician is found dead in the hold of a smuggler’s freighter bound for California. The Chinese and American authorities suspect the deaths are linked and, in a rare move, join forces to solve the crime, and soon U.S. District Attorney David Stark is sent across the Pacific to team up with brilliant yet rebellious police detective Liu Hulan. Their investigation takes them into every corner of today’s China—from glitzy karaoke bars, where government leaders and mafia kingpins make their most unsavory deals, to Beijing’s labyrinthine hutongs, where working-class Chinese have eked out their livings for centuries.
Revealing a China that most Westerners have never seen—a strange nation at once admirable and frightening—Flower Net is an utterly original story and one of the most timely, thrilling, and thought-provoking reads from an astonishing new writer.
“Flower Net is a treat. In this, her debut mystery, Lisa See begins to do for contemporary Beijing what, say, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did for turn-of-the-century London or Dashiell Hammett did for 1920s San Francisco”.—Washington Post
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Reviews
Amazon.com
“Inspector Liu, do I need to remind you that China has customs and rituals for dealing with guests?” says a top Chinese official to one his police investigators early in Lisa See’s tremendously powerful debut thriller. “Remember that all foreigners are potentially dangerous. Don’t be tempted to say what you think. Don’t show anger or irritation. Be humble and careful and gracious. Draw them in. Let them think they have a connection to you, that they owe you, that they should never cause you any embarrassment. This is how we have treated outsiders for centuries. This is how you will treat this foreigner as long as he is our guest.” The fact that the official is her father and the foreigner in question is her former lover, an assistant U.S. attorney named David Stark, makes things much more complicated for Liu Hulan. Hulan is a former Red Princess, one of the privileged children of Chairman Mao’s most trusted aides. When two young men (the son of the American ambassador to China and the son of an immensely powerful Chinese businessman with possible criminal connections) are murdered under similar circumstances, Hulan and Stark are cynically manipulated by their respective governments into a joint investigation that exposes the worst of both countries. The situation also gives See a chance to meld her impressive talent for writing fiction with the solid journalism skills that invigorated her family saga On Gold Mountain.
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Trade relations between the U.S. and China might be tense right now, but when it comes to solving a double murder, things have never been better. In Lisa See’s transpacific thriller, The Flower Net, Liu Hulan, an inspector for the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing teams up with her American counterpart and former lover, David Stark, to get to the bottom of two unusual deaths. The American ambassador’s son has been found frozen in a lake just outside the Forbidden City; meanwhile, the corpse of a prominent Chinese businessman’s son is found floating in a boat off the California coast. It’s up to Hulan and David to unravel the tangled skein of circumstance that connects the two murders. Though David Stark may come off a tad stereotypical, Liu Hulan is a fascinating character—a woman who embodies both East and West and who has learned to keep her thoughts to herself as she navigates the treacherous waters of Chinese politics. And See’s evocation of Beijing, right down to its old neighbourhoods and the smell in the air, is an added delight, making The Flower Net an exotic distraction for a wintry afternoon.
