Harry Bosch is working with an elite team of crime fighters in Los Angeles. He gets the call to investigate a murder in South Los Angeles and takes him to Fortune Liquors. Bosch remembered the Chinese owner who had been shot a few years before. The owner had given him a box of matches at the time, mind you; “Happy the man who finds refuge in himself.” Bosch had carried the matchbook with him ever since. The catchphrase had helped Bosch and he considered it a kindness from Mr. Li.
Surveillance camera footage from the liquor store, along with an interview with Li’s son, help Bosch and his partner, Iggy Ferras, conclude that the shooter may have gone there to collect protection or bribe money. This Chinese man was identified as Jing Chang. He was a member of a triad. A triad is a kind of mafia or crime syndicate type group with roots in Hong Kong. The Chinese triads had been a special focus of the LAPD’s Asian gang detection unit, so Bosch worked with a detective named David Chu. There was some mistrust at first, but eventually they worked well together.
Harry then receives news that his daughter, who lives in Hong Kong, has suddenly disappeared from her home there. Maddie lives with her mother. She immediately thinks there may be a connection between the liquor store crime and her son. She stops what she is doing and takes a flight to the imperial city to look for her daughter.
Detective Harry Bosch confronts the Chinese Triads at their source. Now it had become his personal business. His ex-wife is freaking out. Harry had been married briefly to form FBI agent Eleanor Wish. They had a daughter, but Bosch didn’t hear from her until long after her divorce. Eleanor first lived in Las Vegas and then moved to China to work at a casino in Macau. Harry had just met his daughter. He loved her now. They talked on the phone and texted regularly. He certainly didn’t want anything to happen to him now.
Harry jumped straight into the dangerous parts of the city. Kowloon was where most of the triads were located. He was able to observe the activities surrounding the Hungry Ghost Festival. The people there would burn sacrifices to his ancestors. Hong Kong was rather strange to him, even though he had been there before in calmer times.
One thing he’d done with Mattie, he’d innocently sent her photos of the victim’s cancerous lungs as a warning to parents about the dangers of smoking. Furthermore, she had asked him to translate a tattoo found on Li’s ankles from her open case. She sent a photo to her Mandarin-speaking daughter in the hope that she could interpret it. Maddie was a smart teenager.
Unbeknownst to the Hong Kong authorities, Harry picks some locks and shoots some bad guys. His ex-wife is shot in a crossfire. His daughter is finally located. She had been kidnapped by the Chinese triads. When she found her, she was covered up and in the trunk of a car. Harry and Maddie head to the airport. He will now live with Bosch in Los Angeles.
Back in Los Angeles, Bosch discovers that nothing has progressed on the Fortune Liquors case since Iggy was off work over the weekend. Harry angrily tells Iggy that he’s going to get a new partner. Local police were unable to apprehend the accused man and he was later released on bail. He fled the country. Next, the Hong Kong police unit arrives with an extradition request for Bosch. Bosch takes his lawyer, his half-brother Mickey Haller, to a meeting with the Chinese. Haller threatens to make the case a front-page story about the dangers American citizens face in Hong Kong. The source joins the sheets without charges. They also agree to release Sun Yee, who had helped Harry.
Then, a special technique of picking up a fingerprint from a recovered casing, ends up belonging to screenwriter Henry Lau and not the triad guy. Bosch and Chu visit him. They learn that Lau was unaware that the gun had been borrowed from his nightstand. Bosch notices Lau’s framed college diploma, from the same year of college and graduation as the one in Robert Li’s office. Lau says that he and Robert were roommates along with Li’s assistant manager, Eugene Lam. The three of them got together to play cards on a regular basis.
Bosch and Chu then arrest Lam, who they believe to be the killer. Lam confesses that the murder of his father had been a plot. His sister Mia planned it all. So Robert came up with the idea to make it look like a triad murder. Iggy goes to arrest Robert Li and is shot by Mia. He then kills himself.
Maddie then tells her father that the kidnapping was originally faked. She was trying to get her mother to let her live with Harry in Los Angeles. Her friend’s brother turned it into a real kidnapping to get money from the triad. The triad ended up shooting him. Maddie blames herself for her mother’s death. Harry then promised to help her correct her mistakes from her past and feel good about herself.
This novel is fast paced and interesting and keeps you tuned in. However, it does make you wonder why a son and daughter would have a father just because he refused to close an unprofitable store in the old neighborhood.
