Kuo-Li Chang

Detective Wu has only 12 days left before his retirement as one of the leading detectives in Taipei's homicide squad. So when a sailor is found dead, he hopes it to turn out to be an easy case - a suicide or a clear murder. And so it seems initially - until Wu looks closer and really dislikes what he sees. And does not appreciate the Navy pushing him to declare it a suicide. It gets even worse when another sailor is found dead and the homicide squad gets ordered to keep the two investigations separate.

And while sailors die in Taiwan, a Taiwanese government advisor is shot in Rome by a sniper. And then someone tries to kill the sniper.

The novel has two main characters - Wu and Alex - the sniper who took that shot in Rome. Except that the roles are not what one would expect.

Alex is Taiwanese, ex-military and when he shot the man he believed that he was ordered to do it by his old commander and that he did it for Taiwan. And then he saw the men he served with trying to kill him - which made no sense. So the hunter became the hunted and Alex started running across Europe.

Meanwhile in Taiwan, things do not look very well for our retiring detective - he will hate to leave a case unsolved but the case(s) do not seem to want to get solved. And before long a link is found between Rome and the Navy and things get even more complicated.

And somewhere alongside all the action, the picture of Taiwan also emerges - a corrupted Taiwan and probably a lot more exotic to my eyes than to someone who lives there but still different enough to become a character on its own.

The end is predictable - even if some of the details are not. The novel had nowhere else to go unless the author wanted to kill everyone. As it was, a lot of people died. And while I was reading the novel, I was thinking that it will work nicely as a movie - it had enough action and exotic locales to make it almost tangible.

An enjoyable novel overall.… (mehr)