City of Dragons

Starred review from December 21, 2009
Set in San Francisco in 1940, Stanley's stunning first in a new series introduces a gutsy, independent heroine who isn't always likable. As the city celebrates the Chinese New Year with the Rice Bowl Party, a three-day carnival to raise money for China's war relief, PI Miranda Corbie sees Eddie Takahashi, a young Japanese numbers runner, shot dead in front of her on a crowded, fireworks-filled Chinatown street. When the police tell her to forget about Takahashi (“Chalk him up to Nanking”), the outraged Miranda decides to seek justice on her own. In her quest for Takahashi's killer, she encounters racism and sexism at nearly every turn. A former escort who's reinvented herself as a detective, the 33-year-old Miranda isn't taken seriously by the cops, who enjoy rehashing her past. Stanley (Nox Dormienda
) aptly describes San Francisco as a city “redolent and glistening with sin and lamplight, forever a girl you didn't take home to Mother.”

Miranda Corbie, a 33-year-old private detective and former escort, witnesses the street murder of a young Japanese-American during a festival in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1940. Sensing injustice, Miranda begins to investigate, but she's warned in no uncertain terms by both the cops and the underworld to keep her nose out of the murder. Narrator Cynthia Holloway employs a suitably unsentimental voice to portray Miranda's sleuthing dexterity--she's a tough dame with persistence, good legs, and street savvy. Although Holloway's gritty style is well suited to this noir mystery, her odd mispronunciations and feeble accents are distracting. Holloway is more successful with the narrative, especially the detailed descriptions of San Francisco's Chinatown just before WWII. N.M.C. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine