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A Detective Jack Yu Investigation
Series · 5 books · 2006-2017

Books in series

Chinatown Beat book cover
#1

Chinatown Beat

2006

Detective Jack Yu is assigned to the Chinatown precinct as the only officer of Chinese descent. He investigates a series of attacks on children and a missing mistress, shifting between the world of street thugs and gangs and the Chinatown of the rich and powerful. Detective Jack Yu grew up in Chinatown. Some of his friends are criminals now; some are dead. Jack has just been transferred to his old neighborhood, where 99 percent of the cops are white. Unlike the others, confused by the residents who speak another language even when they’re speaking English, Jack knows what’s going on. He is confronted with a serial rapist who preys on young Chinese girls. Then Uncle Four, an elderly and respected leader of the charitable Hip Ching Society and member of the Hong Kong-based Red Circle Triad, is gunned down. Jack learns that benevolent Uncle Four had a gorgeous young mistress imported from Hong Kong. And she is missing. To solve these crimes, Jack turns to an elderly fortune teller, an old friend of his, in addition to employing modern police methods. This debut mystery powerfully conveys the sights, sounds, and smells of Chinatown, as well as the attitudes of its inhabitants.
Year of the Dog book cover
#2

Year of the Dog

2008

A rollercoaster ride with NYPD Detective Jack Yu, illuminating the underground world of Chinatown gambling, smuggling, and protection He’s been transferred to a different precinct, but Detective Jack Yu cannot get away from Chinatown’s criminals—his old friends—who have hooked up with the Hong Kong-based triads in an elaborate nationwide credit card fraud. He also cannot escape the Chinese victims whose stories cry out for justice, like the teenage Chinese take-out delivery boy brutally murdered in the projects.
Red Jade book cover
#3

Red Jade

2010

While investigating two bodies found in Chinatown's historic Tong battleground, NYPD Detective Jack Yu's pursuit takes him from New York's Chinatown to Seattle's Chinatown, tracking a cold-blooded Chinese-American gangster and a mysterious Hong Kong femme fatale The bodies of a young man and woman are discovered at an address on the Bloody Angle, Chinatown’s historic Tong battleground. NYPD Detective Jack Yu had thought he was done working in Chinatown, but old allegiances pull him back in. Is it a simple murder-suicide? The grieving families want him to keep a lid on any stories that might further tarnish their family names—but the Golden Galaxy club, where the young woman worked, is made for scandal. Drugs, snakeheads, smuggled prostitutes: “Girls don’t last long before getting dirty.” As a puzzling web of links between the murders and the criminal underworld reveals itself, Yu’s investigation takes him across the country to another Chinatown, this one in Seattle. In the new city, stymied by the uncooperative local cops, he tracks a cold-blooded Chinese American gangster and a mysterious Hong Kong femme fatale.
Death Money book cover
#4

Death Money

2014

When a floater that surfaces in the Harlem River turns out to be Chinese, Yu leaves his downtown precinct to investigate. Yu knocks on the usual doors, and the trail leads to the Gee family, noodle manufacturers who on the surface look like the ideal immigrant success story. When the body of an unidentified Asian man is found in the Harlem River, NYPD Detective Jack Yu is pulled in to investigate. The murder takes Jack from the benevolent associations of Chinatown to the take-out restaurants, strip clubs, and underground gambling establishments of the Bronx, to a wealthy, exclusive New Jersey borough. It's a world of secrets and unclear allegiances, of Chinatown street gangs and major Triad players. With the help of an elderly fortune teller and an old friend, the unpredictable Billy Bow, Jack races to solve his most difficult case yet.
Lucky book cover
#5

Lucky

2017

Chinatown gang leader “Lucky” Louie was shot outside of a Chinatown off track betting establishment on the thirteenth of January, and lay in a coma for 88 days, waking on Easter Sunday. The number 88 is a double-helix double-lucky Chinese number; religion and superstition all lean Lucky’s way. But Detective Jack Yu, Lucky’s boyhood blood brother, fears his friend’s luck is about to run out. When Lucky embarks on a complex and daring series of crimes against the Chinatown criminal underground, Jack races to stop him before his enemies do so—permanently.

Author

Henry Chang
Henry Chang
Author · 6 books

Henry Chang is a New Yorker, a native son of Chinatown and the Lower East Side. His poems have appeared in the seminal Yellow Pearl, anthology, and in Gangs In New York’s Chinatown. He has written for Bridge Magazine, and his fiction has appeared in On A Bed Of Rice and in the NuyorAsian Anthology. His debut novel Chinatown Beat garnered high praise from the New York Times Book Review, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, among others. Henry Chang is a graduate of CCNY (City College of New York). He has been a lighting consultant, and a Security Director for major hotels, commercial properties, and retail businesses in Manhattan. He resides in the Chinatown area and has finished the fifth book of his Chinatown Trilogy, Lucky, which will be available Spring 2017. His fourth book, Death Money was published April 2014.

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A Detective Jack Yu Investigation