Take No Names

May 2, 2022
At the start of Nieh’s taut sequel to 2019’s Beijing Payback, Victor Li, who’s living under an alias in Seattle, accepts a job offer from Mark Knox, who says he runs “Logistical Solutions. Number One in the Seattle Area for Making Things Run Smoothly.” Actually, Knox is a crook who specializes in breaking into storage facilities to steal valuable items. During one such burglary, Li finds a puzzle box containing another puzzle box, out of which drops “an oblong red stone” that looks like an uncut ruby. Li soon figures out it’s Painite, “the world’s rarest gem,” which Chinese extraction firms have been illegally mining in Myanmar. For the past year, Western countries have been boycotting Painite as a conflict stone since the Myanmar government began committing genocide against the Rakhine people in the region. That makes unloading the jewel complicated, and Li and Knox become enmeshed in a Chinese scheme to launder money and evade U.S. sanctions. Nieh makes the complex plot elements fit together while engendering sympathy for his morally compromised lead. Fans of Glen Erik Hamilton’s Van Shaw books will be hooked. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary.

May 1, 2022
The continuing saga of Victor Li, California-raised son of a murdered Chinese crime syndicate member, here enmeshed in a deadly scheme involving a Chinese conglomerate, American Black Ops, and other corrupt forces tied to the building of a new airport in Mexico. Now hiding out in Seattle, wanted for a murder he didn't commit, Victor has a job as a deluxe dumpster diver, breaking into a security's firms storage bins to find sellable items left behind by the deported. His big find is a painite, "the world's rarest gem," worth $65,000 per karat. With his nominal boss, Mark, a boisterous, uneven-tempered hustler, he heads to Mexico to fence the gemstone--mined by the Chinese in Burma and banned in the U.S.--using contact information found in its former owner's intricately coded notebook. Shot by bad guys, imprisoned, and played by supposed American agents, Victor has insult added to those woes when his estranged sister, Jules, shows up with Sun Jianshui, his father Vincent's lethal prot�g� and, Victor recently learned, Vincent's killer. Can he really be Jules' lover? The good news is that Sun, who apologizes for slashing the elder Li's throat, is an ace in the hole in fighting off bad guys from both sides of the border. And he knows his way around security systems. A big improvement over Nieh's debut, Beijing Payback (2019), the new book combines biting humor, breathless action scenes, a clever presentation of mixed languages, and dark geopolitical commentary, including an indictment of America's own duplicity. It's a lot of fun. A cutting thriller with nonstop action and twisty consequences.

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July 1, 2022
In Bejing Payback (2019), Vincent Li discovered his murdered father's secret life as an underworld boss and teamed up with the elder Li's enforcer, Sun, to find the killer among his father's partners. Unfortunately, that adventure ends with Victor on the lam, the prime suspect for one of Sun's unexpected payback murders. After months laying low in an anonymous bed-share, Victor is forced to run again when he and Mark, his secretive war-veteran boss, are busted stealing from caches of deportees' confiscated luggage. The bungled heist yields some hope through a lead to a valuable gem with a buyer in Mexico. But, in Mexico City, things get complicated when the buyer, a powerful US defense contractor, refuses to pay unless Victor and Mark carry out a mission targeting a controversial Chinese-built airport. Fortunately, Victor's no-nonsense sister, Jules, senses disaster and shows up with Sun in tow. Gripping heist planning, loads of near-deaths, and a shot at reconciliation among Victor, his sister, and Sun create a juggernaut of a sequel here.

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