It is the fall of 1994, and NYPD Detective Jack Yu has come home home to Chinatown where he'd grown up with his father, a Chinese immigrant laundry worker. He'd asked to be transfered here, to the 0-Five, to be close to his father at the end of his nearly five decades living in a Mott street tenement, and now he finds himself living in two worlds; the white world of the gwai lo where the Chinese community is something to be contained, not understood, and the yellow world of his childhood; full of old ways and loyalties untouched by the white world beyond the borders of Chinatown.

Jack's father wouldn't leave the enclave he'd made home, despite his son's attempts to take him away from the squalor and the past. He'd wanted his old friends and familiar streets even more than Jack had wanted to leave them behind, and now with his father only a few days dead and buried, Jack is left with the ghosts of his past to keep him company as he packs up his father's few possessions.

Those ghosts include a childhood friend who choose the other route out of the shadows, into Chinese organized crime, and the memory of the friend that died there, finding, if not choosing, yet another way out. Jack moves through these worlds in a haze, often alcoholic, dealing with the pain and regret of not having given his father what he wanted, for not having been there when he died, for not having said goodbye.

For the Chinese immigrants who live here, this is a time of transition as the lines between Chinatown and the rest of the city begin to blur and the policy of containment will no longer suffice. Not so long ago there were no interpreters or community liaison's, but it is still a time when the vast majority of the police force view the precinct as an alien landscape, incomprehensible and untouchable. Full of sights and smells their brains can't quite process, not so distant from the Chinatown of Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, miles and decades away in space and time, but right around the corner in familiarity. Don't worry about it Jake, it's Chinatown

Chinatown Beat is a gritty noir investigation of the world behind the face of New York's Chinese community, offered up by an author who grew up immersed in its culture as much as his protagonist. From my vantage point a dozen years after the story, the hardest part to relate to is the obtuseness of the white cops, not the casual power of the Tongs or the fear and despair of the illegals shipped in from China, or the girls in the brothels, or even the mistress of "Uncle Four" a young woman trapped in the gilded cage owned by an aging senior member of the Hip Ching Tong. Mona, Uncle Four's mistress may be trapped and miserable, but she's hardly helpless. She's patient, cunning, and determined to be free.

Jack follows two cases throughout the book, neither of which are as much mysteries as they are vehicles for character development and a view of the city's squalor. First, there's a serial rapist preying on young girls, preteens, and Jack has to work through the reluctance of the community to trust outsiders to bring the rapist to justice. Then there's the matter of Mona's solution to her indenture, which left her prominent leash holder dead and a sack full of drug money missing. Like most written procedurals, we're less concerned with whodunit than whether they'll be brought to justice. In this uniquely Chinese story, justice tends less to be something that one is brought to, and more something that slowly finds its way to wherever you are.

As Jack follows the cases, he winds his way through a fractured landscape of old and new. He consults the old woman who his father went to for lucky words or lottery numbers. He spars with, then befriends, a pushy lawyer anxious to leave her Chinese roots behind. He confronts his old friend Lucky, now a rising member of the tongs. And through it all he struggles to find some justice for the victims, and a way to frame his own life that makes sense.

Reading Henry Chang's debut novel is like looking at the world below Canal street through a Chinese festival mask. It's the same world you've always seen, but transformed by viewpoint. The familiar becomes alien, and the unfathomable becomes home. It's an experience well worth having, and one which will leave you looking forward to Jack Yu's next investigation, wherever it takes him.

I just purchased Henry Chang's Chinatown Beat two days ago and I'm nearly finished. I'm familar with many of the venues Chang evokes through Manhattan and especially C-town. Can't wait until Year of the Dog is published. Jack Yu ranks right up there with Connelly's Harry Bosch and Mosely's Easy Rawlins.