The Mountain Master of Sha Tin

May 27, 2019
Arthur Ellis Award–winner Hamilton, in his solid 12th novel featuring diminutive but deadly Ava Lee (after The Goddess Yantai), centers the story on a gang war in Hong Kong, where once dominant Sammy Wing and his vicious nephew, Carter Wing, are trying to take back power now wielded by Xu, “Ava’s closest male friend,” who heads the triads in Shanghai. Xu himself is ill, and his Hong Kong deputy, Lop, was wounded in an assassination attempt, so it’s up to Ava to coordinate the gang’s response to the insurgents. She must be careful not to attract the attention of the police or the Communist government, but she also must defend the gang’s honor as forcefully as necessary. As in The Godfather, strict professional decorum is mixed with cold brutality, as when Ava meets the Wings in an upscale restaurant to negotiate the release of kidnapped members of Xu’s gang and is presented with a box of severed fingers. Hamilton provides a fascinating peek into a disturbingly glamorous world.

June 1, 2019
Just as she's finding happiness in her personal life with Chinese movie star Pang Fai, the intrepid Ava Lee, a cross between an accountant and James Bond, is needed in a crisis. Her closest male friend, Xu, head of the Shanghai triads, is hospitalized six of his men are abducted in Hong Kong. The move was orchestrated by Sammy Wing and his ruthless nephew, Carter Wing, the new Mountain Master of Sha Tin, to reclaim the Wanchai territory in Hong Kong from Xu. Ava, who has her own history with Sammy after he twice tried to kill her, tries to broker a deal with the Wings as she waits for Xu's health to improve. But at the end of their meeting, she's given a box containing one finger from each of the kidnapped men, so she prepares to meet strength with greater strength. The connections Ava made with her late partner, Uncle Tung, are called into play, as the level of violence ascends, and she deals with Sammy Wing as she should have done years earlier. Another action-packed entry in a solid series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)