Starred review from May 15, 2008
Edgar Award-nominated Thompson continues her "Gaslight" mystery series with this ninth title featuring midwife Sarah Brandt and police detective Frank Malloy. This work provides a vivid portrayal of the culture clash between Irish and Chinese immigrants as well as life in New York City's tenements in the early 20th century. Thompson says she "became enchanted with New York City" while her daughter attended New York University, and she has taken that enchantment and used it to create a thought-provoking historical mystery told against the backdrop of those overpopulated and often squalid buildings. Suzanne Toren makes each character come alive with her clear and forceful narration. Murder in Chinatown is compelling, with a surprising climax, and the listener's interest will be engaged throughout. Highly recommended. [The paperback of this mystery, released last year, is due in June 2008; also available as downloadable audio from Audible.comDenise A. Garofalo, Astor Home for Children, Rhinebeck, NY
Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
April 30, 2007
Edgar-finalist Thompson’s eye-opening ninth Gaslight mystery (after 2006’s Murder in Little Italy) examines the culture clash in early 20th-century New York City between Chinese and Irish immigrants, whose poverty prompted many of them to intermarry. While midwife Sarah Brandt is attending pregnant Cora Lee, “a strapping Irish girl” whose husband is a successful Chinese merchant, Cora’s teenage half-Chinese niece, Angel, bursts into Cora’s Chinatown flat and asks Cora to save her from an arranged marriage to Mr. Wong, an elderly Chinese restaurant owner. When Angel later disappears, Sarah investigates and learns the missing girl had a secret lover, a young Irishman. After Angel winds up dead in an alley, Sarah turns to her detective friend, Frank Malloy, for help. The action of this thought-provoking novel with its vivid portrait of the miseries of tenement life builds to an unexpected climax.