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A Detective Jack Yu Investigation #4
Death Money (Detective Jack Yu) by Henry Chang
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.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
15 people are currently reading
328 people want to read
About the author
Henry Chang
16 books52 followersHenry 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.
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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
August 17, 2022
Death Money was quite the unique read. This was my first Detective Jack Yu book. Detective Yu works out of Chinatown. I suppose one would label this as a pretty normal cop drama. The character development for Detective Jack Yu is great. We do get to know him quiite well in this book.
We do learn a little about the characters around him as well, but not as much.
This was a pretty short mystery read, and I feel like if I had read the others in the series first, it may all be more engaging for me. for now, it just felt like an okay read.
We do learn a little about the characters around him as well, but not as much.
This was a pretty short mystery read, and I feel like if I had read the others in the series first, it may all be more engaging for me. for now, it just felt like an okay read.
May 16, 2014
It's been a few years since Henry Chang has published a NYPD Detective Jack Yu procedural and this, the 4th, is a welcome return. Here, Yu is assigned (seemingly based on ethnicity alone) to investigate the death of an unidentified young Asian man found in the Harlem River. Just like a solo private eye (this book reads like a noirish private eye thriller), Yu is basically on his own (he has no partner and calls on only minimal police assistance) as he searches for the identities of killer and victim. There's no pyrotechnics or strong action here, just methodical, well-plotted police work with strong characters (especially Billy - Yu's good friend, tofu shop owner. and sort of loose cannon).
August 27, 2019
Marvelous series
I do have to wish Mr. Chang would give a glossary of Chinese food names. My copy is littered with notes from Googling foodstuffs.
Otherwise a very solid series and I look forward to further additions to Jack Yu's saga.
(I've cooked Asian cuisines of various types for 40 years of so and a food tour would be a real adventure of ever I were to visit the scene of the crimes.)
I do have to wish Mr. Chang would give a glossary of Chinese food names. My copy is littered with notes from Googling foodstuffs.
Otherwise a very solid series and I look forward to further additions to Jack Yu's saga.
(I've cooked Asian cuisines of various types for 40 years of so and a food tour would be a real adventure of ever I were to visit the scene of the crimes.)
June 9, 2017
This short mystery provides a gritty noir snapshot of NYC's Chinatown, but the author doesn't really make the reader care about any of the characters, so I found it pretty tough to wade through and only finished it because of the Summer Reading Club.
April 30, 2024
A tight procedural that shows just how diverse the Chinese/Chinese American community is in NYC. I bought in NYC, so tracking the very same streets Detective Jack Yu walked was enjoyable. Cop-ganda with a yellow face is still cop-ganda, however.
November 25, 2020
This is the first book I've read in the Detective Jack Yu series. Yu operates pretty much on his own in Chinatown NYC with the assistance of at least one off-center local who seems to assist more out of friendship and the excitement of the chase than pay. This is a pretty straightforward cop drama that travels through the underbelly of the area where a group of people - Asian, white and black professionals and others - form a community all their own. I'm not certain that knowing more about the culture that is portrayed would make it more or less engaging. A lot of time and pages are spent traveling around the city but there is a spiral of action that eventually comes to a tip and a wrap. There are at least four colorful characters including Detective Yu that enrich the experience. I'll likely read more of the series.
December 7, 2022
I didn't find this particular outing as emotionally engaging as the first novel in this series. It has a very terse style that propels the plot forward, but there was no real pause in the action. It felt like nothing but plot without much characterization. And for me, it had a deeply unsatisfying ending. Of course, Jack Yu found it be deeply unsatisfactory, too.
October 22, 2020
A recent check shows there are only 5 in the series, which is a shame. I like this series would like to see more. What a culturally complicated world a second generation Chinese man living in China town working as a detective. These are fast paced and complicated.
January 12, 2022
3.8 much more character development . A simple crime. Who killed the Chinese food delivery man? Again Jack Wu is called in. More in depth descriptions of Chinatown NY . Love the character of the seer . Wu love life disrupted . Enjoyable.
April 2, 2019
Not as good. Doesn't contain the inner emotions of the characters like the previous books. Lacks the tension of the chase for the woman.
May 28, 2025
Six-word Review: Unrelenting detective work solves a murder.
Longer review later.
Longer review later.
March 10, 2017
Not up to the standard of the first three, but still terrific. Looking forward to the next one.
May 3, 2014
Henry Chang's Death Money (ShHo Crime, 2014, 225 pages, $25.00) is a police procedural with a difference. Set in the, to most people, mysterious, even alien, nether world of the Chinese immigrant community in New York City, the story follows Detective Jack Yu, as he investigates the murder of a young Asian man found hung op on a tangle of branches in the middle of the East River on a cold January night. Jack Yu, referred to as Jack throughout the narrative, is called into follow up on the mysterious death because he is Chinese, and stereotypically well-equipped to undertake the investigation. Throughout the fast-paced narrative, there always lies an undertone of racial awarenss and conflict between the Chinese detective and other elements of the police force in both their dealing with him and with the Chinese (and broader Asian) community. Although this is the second in what appears to be developing as a series of novels, reading the previous book is not necessary for the enjoyment or understanding of Death Money.
Having been assigned the investigation of the mysterious death of a hard to even identify Asian man, Jack must seek to place him before trying to find his killers. His search takes him into the depths of Chinatown in Manhattan as well as satellite Asian communities in Brooklyn and Queens which only exist in mythology for casual visitors who journey into Chinese neighborhoods to get better (and/or more authentic) Chinese food than might be available at suburban strip malls. The world of illegal immigrants smuggled into the U.S. through Canadian access or directly from Hong Kong or the mainland and a Chinese underworld with direct connections to mainland China and around the world (think of a Chinese mafia with hundreds of years of tradition behind it and a more impenetrable language for western ears and eyes). Add to this the gang rivalries of different family groups and gangs that continue to exist on a worldwide scale, both criminal and financial. Jack is caught between the Chinese suspicion of his having become a cop, police racism, and corrupt power relationships that lead to his being warned off by Internal Affairs after a powerful Chinese family complains of harassment. Read the rest of the review on my blog, if you're interested, and then please order it through the Amazon portal there.
Having been assigned the investigation of the mysterious death of a hard to even identify Asian man, Jack must seek to place him before trying to find his killers. His search takes him into the depths of Chinatown in Manhattan as well as satellite Asian communities in Brooklyn and Queens which only exist in mythology for casual visitors who journey into Chinese neighborhoods to get better (and/or more authentic) Chinese food than might be available at suburban strip malls. The world of illegal immigrants smuggled into the U.S. through Canadian access or directly from Hong Kong or the mainland and a Chinese underworld with direct connections to mainland China and around the world (think of a Chinese mafia with hundreds of years of tradition behind it and a more impenetrable language for western ears and eyes). Add to this the gang rivalries of different family groups and gangs that continue to exist on a worldwide scale, both criminal and financial. Jack is caught between the Chinese suspicion of his having become a cop, police racism, and corrupt power relationships that lead to his being warned off by Internal Affairs after a powerful Chinese family complains of harassment. Read the rest of the review on my blog, if you're interested, and then please order it through the Amazon portal there.
July 16, 2015
Mysterious Book Report No. 182
by John Dwaine McKenna
Ever been to Chinatown in New York City? Go down to Mott Street in lower Manhattan and it’s as if you’ve stepped into a foreign land . . . it’s a place of exotic sights, sounds and smells, a place where even the signs on the store fronts are in another language; indecipherable for nearly all English speakers. For those who live there, it’s a reminder of the country they left behind and a comfort because of its familiarity. That’s the Chinatown the tourists see, and it faces outward, it’s the public face the world to sees. But there’s another, secret aspect of Chinatown that faces inward; it’s about vice: gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking, drugs, violence and death. It’s where the gangs and criminals, the tongs and Triads with ties going all the way back to China operate with impunity . . . right under the noses of the NYPD.
Death Money, (SOHO Press Inc., $25.00, 215 pages, ISBN 978-1-61695-351-5) by Henry Chang takes the reader deep into that illicit, hidden Chinatown through the eyes and actions of NYPD Detective Jack Yu as he tries to solve the murder of an Asian man whose body is pulled from the Harlem River. With no identity and no clues as to why the man was killed, Detective Yu searches from the Chinese benevolent associations, underground gambling dens, strip clubs and takeout restaurants from Manhattan to the Bronx looking for answers. Along the way he enlists the aid of an elderly fortune teller and an old acquaintance from the neighborhood in a frantic effort to solve the case before more corpses start showing up. This novel is a continuation of the Jack Yu series and I found it to be the most entertaining one to date. It’s fast pace and “ring of truth” puts it into the hard-boiled camp of the crime fiction genre, and it reads easily, with a familiarity that only a Chinatown native could have. It’s a flat-out fun read. If you haven’t met Jack Yu, you’re in for a real treat.
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by John Dwaine McKenna
Ever been to Chinatown in New York City? Go down to Mott Street in lower Manhattan and it’s as if you’ve stepped into a foreign land . . . it’s a place of exotic sights, sounds and smells, a place where even the signs on the store fronts are in another language; indecipherable for nearly all English speakers. For those who live there, it’s a reminder of the country they left behind and a comfort because of its familiarity. That’s the Chinatown the tourists see, and it faces outward, it’s the public face the world to sees. But there’s another, secret aspect of Chinatown that faces inward; it’s about vice: gambling, prostitution, loan-sharking, drugs, violence and death. It’s where the gangs and criminals, the tongs and Triads with ties going all the way back to China operate with impunity . . . right under the noses of the NYPD.
Death Money, (SOHO Press Inc., $25.00, 215 pages, ISBN 978-1-61695-351-5) by Henry Chang takes the reader deep into that illicit, hidden Chinatown through the eyes and actions of NYPD Detective Jack Yu as he tries to solve the murder of an Asian man whose body is pulled from the Harlem River. With no identity and no clues as to why the man was killed, Detective Yu searches from the Chinese benevolent associations, underground gambling dens, strip clubs and takeout restaurants from Manhattan to the Bronx looking for answers. Along the way he enlists the aid of an elderly fortune teller and an old acquaintance from the neighborhood in a frantic effort to solve the case before more corpses start showing up. This novel is a continuation of the Jack Yu series and I found it to be the most entertaining one to date. It’s fast pace and “ring of truth” puts it into the hard-boiled camp of the crime fiction genre, and it reads easily, with a familiarity that only a Chinatown native could have. It’s a flat-out fun read. If you haven’t met Jack Yu, you’re in for a real treat.
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October 14, 2014
Detective Jack Wu once again is tapped to solve a case because he is of Chinese descent. When the body of an Asian man is seen embedded in the debris and ice of the Harlem River, he is called from his Chinatown precinct to take control of the case, which turns out to be one of murder.
The only problem is that the victim has no identification, and there isn’t a clue to be found. So Wu follows the Chinese community through the city, north to The Bronx and its restaurants, gambling and sex dens, and south to Chinatown and its own fleshpots and gaming spots. And along the way, he learns a variety of secrets attempting to give justice to a man who was all but invisible.
This fourth novel in the series, as were its predecessors, is economically written, with especially short sentences, and a smattering of Chinese words and phrases to provide authenticity. This police procedural moves in logical progression across New York City, looking deeply at the Chinese culture and environment of New York’s Lower East Side. Wu is an unusual investigator, applying the usual methodology of police investigation with the occult, an old woman who touches object obtained during the investigation and supplying him with clues. Maybe other protagonists should consider Ouija boards.
A very enjoyable read, and recommended.
The only problem is that the victim has no identification, and there isn’t a clue to be found. So Wu follows the Chinese community through the city, north to The Bronx and its restaurants, gambling and sex dens, and south to Chinatown and its own fleshpots and gaming spots. And along the way, he learns a variety of secrets attempting to give justice to a man who was all but invisible.
This fourth novel in the series, as were its predecessors, is economically written, with especially short sentences, and a smattering of Chinese words and phrases to provide authenticity. This police procedural moves in logical progression across New York City, looking deeply at the Chinese culture and environment of New York’s Lower East Side. Wu is an unusual investigator, applying the usual methodology of police investigation with the occult, an old woman who touches object obtained during the investigation and supplying him with clues. Maybe other protagonists should consider Ouija boards.
A very enjoyable read, and recommended.
February 7, 2017
Not my favorite in the series. Felt like there was little mystery and more laying out the story. I was never on the edge of my seat but I do like the Cantonese phases and the integrating Chinese American culture. That was the reason I started this series. Hoping the next one brings better mystery and intrigue.
June 19, 2014
When an Asian man's body is found floating in the river, the victim of murder, Asian NYPD detective Jack Yu is called in to navigate the underworld of Chinatown. With connections to drugs and gambling and some hardcore Chinese gangs, the "floater" turns out to reveal much more than a simple murder.
A passable detective story in the spirit of Sam Spade and Spencer, this is a story worthy of the adjective "noir". The Chinatown setting is particularly seedy and every clue reveals something even seedier. The only problem is that I really didn't care. Not a bad addition to the genre, maybe I'm just not that into it.
A passable detective story in the spirit of Sam Spade and Spencer, this is a story worthy of the adjective "noir". The Chinatown setting is particularly seedy and every clue reveals something even seedier. The only problem is that I really didn't care. Not a bad addition to the genre, maybe I'm just not that into it.
July 6, 2014
Henry Chang's Chinatown is richly described and complex - a far cry from the Canal Street hucksters, though they are there too.
NYPD detective Jack Yu is pulled in to investigate the death of an anonymous Asian floater pulled from the Harlem River. It turns out to be a murder, not a suicide or accident, and the first job is to identify the body. Yu's knowledge of the neighborhood and his street connections, old friends and snitches, a witch, are all critical to his ability to give the dead man a name and find the killer amid the historic gang rivalries.
Yu is a complex character who becomes more interesting with each book, and the Chinatown scene is unforgettable.
NYPD detective Jack Yu is pulled in to investigate the death of an anonymous Asian floater pulled from the Harlem River. It turns out to be a murder, not a suicide or accident, and the first job is to identify the body. Yu's knowledge of the neighborhood and his street connections, old friends and snitches, a witch, are all critical to his ability to give the dead man a name and find the killer amid the historic gang rivalries.
Yu is a complex character who becomes more interesting with each book, and the Chinatown scene is unforgettable.
May 2, 2014
I enjoyed the author's previous books, Year of the Dog and Red Jade, and continue to find the world of NYC's Chinatown fascinating, as it appears in this series. The novel has a no-holds-barred frankness that may shock some, but its honesty in its portrayal of people, places, and situations makes it an intriguing book.
There is a subplot that I wish had been developed more in the novel - Jack Yu's romance with an attractive Chinese lawyer. The subplot could help to lighten some of the tense events of the mystery novel as it went along.
There is a subplot that I wish had been developed more in the novel - Jack Yu's romance with an attractive Chinese lawyer. The subplot could help to lighten some of the tense events of the mystery novel as it went along.
January 7, 2015
Really more like 3 1/2 or 3 3/4.... I really have enjoyed Chang's series. We did the first one, Chinatown Beat, with the Mystery Book Group and it was very well received. This outing felt a bit more 'enclosed' than some of the earlier books, but that's not a bad thing. The focus on the culture and function of a Chinese policeman, both in and out of the Chinatown area, was especially interesting given the current issues about race and bias in the city's police department. Mainly it was just great to have another book in the series after a bit of a wait.
March 29, 2014
This is a decent who done it type book. It isn't the best but it was a very entertaining read that was easy to get into. It was not a difficult read either. The story was a little predictable but like I said still a fun read and worth the time spent. It is a book I could and would recommend to others that want a who done it investigation type book that is simple and easy, not overly done or dramatized.
April 15, 2014
This mystery marks the return of NYPD homicide detective Jack Yu after an absence of several years. The overall message seems to be that life is complicated, and life in Chinatown is especially complicated. An interesting and engaging story, to be sure, but one that is somehow incomplete, a solution but one without answers. Read our full review, here: http://www.mysteriousreviews.com/myst...
April 11, 2015
It was interesting, and ultimately a touch unsettling to meet the creator of Jack Yu and the seedy underside of NYC's Chinatown when he recently visited our tv show, Books du Jour. Learn more about Henry Chang here: https://youtu.be/LOE2LPGkWAk - BTW, Henry isn't nearly as frightening as some of the characters he's created!
http://booksdujour.com
http://booksdujour.com
November 29, 2015
I did not get into this book. Apparently nice specific accounts of chinatown in New York that may make the novel more interesting for a NE resident. The character of the inspector is very slim, the plot has little tension, the writing style is streetwise but does not enough to enrich the pleasure of my reading
February 1, 2016
Rating: probably a 2.75. This is the fourth in a series and in most instances you can figure out what came before. Though not a great literary accomplishment, I liked the mystery, Det. Jack Yu and all the food. Wouldn't mind having him guide me around town in a nosh-fest of foods from various regions. Was glad to see the human, romantic side of him too.
August 27, 2014
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Almost noir, but not quite, IMHO. Loved seeing that side of Chinatown not seen by most of the world. Thought it was a good police procedural. Will go looking for the previous three books.
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October 16, 2022The feel of Chinatown
As a San Francisco denizen, this well crafted and fact filled tale is satisfying and asks for more. Hoorah for Henry Chang. I hope for a new one soon. Thanks.
As a San Francisco denizen, this well crafted and fact filled tale is satisfying and asks for more. Hoorah for Henry Chang. I hope for a new one soon. Thanks.
August 2, 2014
A welcome addition to the Detective Jack Yu series. This is a classic noir whodunit with Chinatown atmosphere. An enjoyable quick read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews