Flower Net - Red Princess, Bk 1 Author:Lisa See In Flower Net, Lisa See rips the veil away from modern China -- its venerable culture, its teeming economy, its institutionalized cruelty -- and highlights the inextricable link between China's fortunes and America's. This is a Gorky Park for our time, a complex, suspenseful, beautifully written novel in which a Chinese cop... more » and an American attorney team up to uncover the deadly conspiracy of Chinese gangs, government and big business that lies behind a series of gory, high-profile murders.
In the depths of a Beijing winter, during the waning days of Deng Zioping's reign, the U.S. ambassador's son is found dead -- his body entombed in a frozen lake. Almost simultaneously, American officials find a ship adrift in the storm-churned waters off Southern California. No one is surprised to find the fetid hold crammed with hundreds of undocumented Chinese immigrants -- the latest cargo in the Chinese mafia's burgeoning smuggling trade.
What does surprise U.S. District Attorney David Starke is his discovery that among the hapless refugees lies the corpse of a "Red Prince," the name given to a child of China's political elite.
The Chinese and American governments both suspect that the deaths are linked and, in an unprecedented move, they join forces to solve this cross-cultural crime. Stark heads for Beijing to team up with Liu Hulan, whose unorthodox methods are tolerated only because of her spectacular investigative abilities. Their investigation carries them (and the reader) into virtually every corner of today's China -- from the glitzy karaoke bars where the nation's new elite cut deals, to the labyrinthine hutongswhere working-class Chinese have lived and died for centuries.
Here is China as readers have never seen it: a surpassingly strange nation at once admirable and frightening. Here too is an utterly original story more taut and timely than anything else on the fiction shelves today.« less
I disagree with this book being only 2 stars. I thought it was an excellent murder mystery that keeps you guessing and draws you into the plot. With so many people going to China it was interesting to read about the different cities.
Wow, I can't believe this does not have more stars. I really enjoyed this book. I have read all the red princess mysteries and I love how the author weaves old Chinese culture and traditions in with a modern female detective. I hope there are more because I enjoy the story line of the life of the main character.
Linda K. reviewed Flower Net (Red Princess, Bk 1) on
Helpful Score: 2
Loved it. So much fun reading a mystery novel in a setting so different from present day American or Victorian England. The story interweaves between Asian cultures & American politics. Lisa See is an amazing storyteller!
this second book of this author held my attention and i did not figure out the end till the last 25-30 pages. set in China and the US it is a murder mystery and love story. think of all the things you know about China and it is in here. it is fast paced and at times brutal.
Definitely worth a read for the information about daily life in China. It makes the impact of the Cultural Revolution real because you can connect it with the character you care about. I also really liked the David-Liu relationship and plan to read more in the series. The mystery itself was so complicated that I gave up trying to guess it and just read for the pleasure of having it explained.
First, the good stuff. Lisa See in her first mystery novel has a good eye for the class struggles inside the Chinese Communist hierarchies, with traditional Chinese cultural mores at the top of the very steep pyramid. Mao-era party cadres rule and dispense wealth and privileges, mostly to their offspring, the Red Princesses and Princes. Liu Hulan, a detective in the Ministry of Public Security, is a Red Princess, her father the Minister, her uncle his deputy. There is plenty of family back-story, before, during, and after the Cultural Revolution. Out of that tumult and choas, Liu Hulan is sent to America to finish school, then she attends college, studies law, has an affair with a young lawyer. Then she flees back to China. "Flower Net" very neatly conveys the tensions and complexities of life on the pyramid of class and privilege, and the iron rules of culture.
The novel starts with two utterly bizarre deaths: the young son of the American Ambassador is frozen in a Beijing lake. The young son of a Chinese billionaire industrialist is found rotting in the water tank of a tramp freighter smuggling Chinese immigrants into America to work in Triad sweat shops.
Red Princess Chief Inspector Liu Hulan catches the case of the dead American. Her former lover, David Stark, now a deputy US attorney, catches the case of the dead Chinese Red Prince, and the immigrant smuggling. Guess what happens. They get to work the cases together, closely watched by their two governments, who are having one of their interminable diplomatic tiffs.
Now, the negative stuff. The whole plot is so full of sub-plots, you feel like See was trying to stuff three novels into "Flower Nets" on top of the mysteries. Hulan and Stark send no reports back to their home offices, so the pyramiding mysteries are all heaped on their (if I can say so, wholly inadequate) shoulders, and they are baffled, outwitted, and out-played right to the end. Others die because these two never act like law enforcement officers. They are too busy having their adventures. See wants us to believe neither government wants them to get to the bottom of these mysteries, but the real reason Hulan and Stark struggle so long is sheer lack of police work and lone ranger-ism. Somehow, the two governments just tag along with this nonsense--deep mysterious forces invisible to us at work.
With a plot this knotty, the characters are literally flying back and forth from China to California. How far up and down the pyramids of power and privilege the criminality extends goes up and down in the book like the jetliners. Lisa See has us and her protagonists at the back end of this complex plot, riding it out in third class confusion, jet-lagged, exhausted, and ready to get off this ultimately uncomfortable ride.
Lisa See writes culturally acurate and sensitive books with intruiging Chinese and American characters that are also wicked awesome thrillers, as in this series.
After the UN Ambasabor to China's son and an Industrial Tycoon of China's son are found murdered in similar ways but in two different conties, a joint investigation into the murders is permitted. To the lead US investigator David Stark's surprise, the lead Chinese investigator turns out to be his old girlfriend who he has not seen in years. This is a story of mystery, suspense and love as well as horried thing occuring for the good of nations. I enjoyed the look into the country of China and the way things are done in governments. The book is fast paced and a good page turner with many twists along the way.
