Beijing Payback

Starred review from May 20, 2019
College basketball player Victor Li, the narrator of Nieh’s remarkable debut, has little to concern him beyond his next game, until his restaurateur father, Vincent Li, is killed in a burglary at home in L.A. Sun Jianshui, a 30-ish immigrant who was raised by Vincent before he married and left for America, tells Victor that his father was part of a criminal enterprise formed when Vincent was a young man in China in the years after Mao’s death. According to Sun, Vincent was murdered for refusing to import a dangerous product called Ice. A letter from Vincent to Victor that Victor finds among his father’s papers instructs him to accompany Sun to Beijing and destroy the syndicate. The rich cast includes beautiful young courtesans, Chinese thugs, Russian gangsters, French journalists, and corrupt police in Beijing. Nieh, a Chinese-English translator, has a real gift for language; one character has “a voice that sounds the way strawberries taste.” This impressive blend of crime and coming-of-age marks Nieh as a talent to watch. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary.

May 15, 2019
After learning that his father's murder was committed not by a burglar, as reported, but by members of a Chinese crime syndicate to which the old man had secret ties, California college senior Victor Li risks his life to find the killers. The kind, upstanding father, Vincent Li, was thought to be the owner of a popular chain of restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley but in fact was only the public face of the Chinese-run operation. Victor has no idea what to make of an attaché case left by his father containing a wad of cash, a fake passport, and a gun. In a letter meant to be read in the event of his death, Vincent explains everything, instructing his son on how to avenge his killing and prevent more deaths. That involves going to Beijing with Vincent's longtime fixer, Sun. In China, the collegian's neophyte nerves are quickly tested by members of the nasty, drug-dealing Snake Hands Gang, a former Russian spy living in exile, and a plot to export stolen human organs to America. It's a perfectly decent story, but for all of the protagonist's f-bombs and a grim account of his paternal grandfather's brutal treatment in Communist labor camps, the book is too lightweight to have any emotional impact. Victor, who narrates, makes much of his life in basketball (he's a bench player on the college team whose much taller black friend Andre brings home the glory), but that adds less dimension than distraction. Nieh's debut novel is likable enough but never as exciting as it tries to be.

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June 1, 2019

The murder of Victor Li's father is shocking enough. Then Victor finds a letter among his father's possessions confessing that he wasn't just a hard-grubbing restaurateur but part of a globe-stretching crime syndicate created during China's hardest times. Eventually, he defied the syndicate, which might explain his death, and Victor determines to take up where his father left off. A debut with a 75,000-copy first printing..

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