Crime Asia

"If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would." - Goodreads reviewer "Chroma Hearts by Mayumi Cruz is a gripping and thought-provoking story about fighting for love against mental illness, with a side of crime solving. Strongly recommended for those who enjoy mind-stirring and heart-squeezing." - KB Meniado, bookbed.org Can love triumph over all—even catatonic depression? Can love defeat everything—even a diabolical evil? A new bride suffering from catatonia. A determined husband trying to break through the black pit in which her brain escaped to. And a ruthless abomination who ...

Isaiah Quintabe - IQ for short - has never been more successful - or felt more alone. A series of high-profile wins in his hometown of East Long Beach have made him so notorious that he can hardly go to the corner store without being recognised. Dodson, once his sidekick, is now his full-fledged partner, hell-bent on giving IQ's PI business some real legitimacy: a Facebook page, and IQ's promise to stop accepting Christmas sweaters and carpet cleanings in exchange for PI services.

Murder is easy. Getting away with it is a whole different matter. Prominent Long Beach businessman Wilmer Judd is dead, gruesomely killed by his own employee, Sonny Cai. The case looks cut and dried, but Dapper Luoo isn’t convinced. From a brand new car that’s missing to the burnt-out remains of a corpse, too many things just don’t add up. Dapper thinks there’s some kind of cover-up, and heads out to find the truth. But in the gritty, complex streets of 1950s Los Angeles, one needs to look over their shoulder lest they end up dead too.

A devil haunts the City of Angels, and the most unlikely of detectives is on the case.1947: While Los Angeles is mesmerized by the sensational Black Dahlia murder, an Asian boy’s mutilated body is found in a back alley of Chinatown. With the thoroughly corrupt LAPD unwilling to devote their already strained resources to cracking the case, it seems this grisly crime is destined to remain unsolved. Tommy “Dapper” Luoo, a Chinese American college student, has dreams of becoming a private detective. Incensed and frustrated by the police’s lack of concern, he decides to help his ...

A relentless gang war is the key to a shocking secretThe year is 1950. After graduating from college, Dapper Luoo stands at a crossroads. His parents want him to work in the family business, but he still dreams of becoming a private eye. Los Angeles is in turmoil. Mobster bosses Mickey Cohen and Jack Dragna are battling each other for control of the city’s underworld rackets, and Dapper is drawn into the fray when he’s given the unenviable task of finding a Chinese gang leader’s missing son. As Dapper gets closer to the truth, family secrets are laid bare, and he’s made privy to an ...

In her 30 years as Temple Hill's most renowned matchmaker, Sarla thought she'd seen it all. Blissful unions, marriages of convenience, Mr. and Mrs. Good Enough. Not to mention the bitter unfortunates who never made it down the aisle. She's received as many threats as thank-yous along the way. Surely no one would actually harm her. A series of threatening notes, sent in blood-red envelopes, suggest otherwise. Then the body of a woman is found at Sarla's office, sprawled on her stomach next to a heavy bronze statue of the Nataraja — the god of dance. Who was the intended victim?

Lex Tyler is trying to have it all. But being a working mother is so much more difficult when you're a secret agent for an underground branch of the security services. Platform Eight have been tasked with tracking down and eliminating the traitor in MI6 who has been selling information to the highest bidder through a headhunting website for the criminal underworld that connects intelligence operatives with all manner of bad people with a simple right swipe. Deals get made. Secrets get sold. Missions fail, and agents die.

As the son of a disgraced army deserter, Dex Kevan has struggled to escape the dark shadow of his father’s past and his own bad attitude. An air cargo specialist for the US Air Force he spends his days counting crates, filling out paperwork, and trying to hold onto his girlfriend as his career prospects crumble. When an unexpected flight arrives carrying a weary flight crew and a colossal secret - a cache of stolen gold bars - a series of events finds Dex and his associates embroiled in a plot that puts a bullseye on their backs.

The third in the series of The Back Bay Investigation, Death Comes to Lake Como takes place a few years after the events of Mystery of Moutai and The Fatal Sin of Love. It opens with Fang Chen and his new bride corresponding with their friend, Ann Lee, while on vacation in Italy. Things quickly turn sinister when a nurse for a wealthy American tourist and a retired cook are murdered.

In Beacon Hill, one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Boston, a wealthy widow dies in her sleep, while in Cambridge, where academia meets high tech, a dog is slaughtered. One death has seemingly no bearing on the other until the death in a remote Chinese village is announced.

A teenager returns home from school to find a gruesome scene: the apartment he shares with his mother in Boston's Chinatown has been ransacked, and she is dead. There is a bottle of Moutai, the most exotic and expensive Chinese liquor, left at the scene and traces of rat poison in one of the two shot glasses on the kitchen counter. This was evidently a homicide, but who could possibly be the killer?

Riki Maddox is not your average tomb-raiding treasure hunter. Her targets are carefully chosen to wound her father’s killers, the Japanese Yakuza. Working for the Department of Homeland Security, Special Agent Dallas Landry is a rare breed. He had a perfect success rate recovering stolen art and antiquities—until he came up against a menace known as Riki Maddox. The two will cross paths once again in Australia—on a quest for the legendary Phantom Pearl, a priceless mammoth tusk carved by 15th century monks.