From Publishers Weekly
A complex plot is no deterrent to enjoyment of Mahoney's ambitious thriller, in which a Cuban-American NYPD detective takes on a powerful 300-year-old Chinese crime association, or triad, whose tentacles reach all over the world. On a visit to Toronto, Det. Cisco Sanchez takes his new fianc?e, Sue Hsu, to her uncle's restaurant, where she stumbles into a gang kidnapping of a kitchen worker and is killed. Executing swift justice, Sanchez holds off the local cops. Bailed out by his partner, well-connected series regular Brian McKenna (Black and White) and their boss, Sanchez and his fellow NYPDers join forces with a Chinese investigator in Toronto. They soon discover that the Chinese gang responsible for the killing has been hired by the triad to "collect" big money payments from illegal Chinese aliens smuggled into New York and Toronto. Launching an attack in both cities, their investigation sends out shock waves far and wide as bodies pile up and the husband and wife triad enforcement team known as Boris and Natasha are captured in Toronto. The couple turn informer to protect their family, but the cops don't count on meeting up with Murray Don't Worry a real-life New York City lawyer who almost steals the book. Murray plays the cops like a Stradivarius while matchmaking between his secretary/niece and Sanchez. When the team finally targets Johnny Eng, the dragon head of the triad (and another Murray client) the action really picks up. McKenna takes a back seat in this outing as Sanchez runs the show, with a little help from his friends. Mahoney's characters are always solid, and this tale is almost a primer on Chinese community dynamics. He pulls no punches and speeds to a perfect ending. (July 27) FYI: The author is a 25-year veteran of the NYPD. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Cisco Sanchez, who considers himself the best detective in the NYPD, is in Toronto for an interdepartmental boxing tournament. He's smart and tough, but that isn't enough to prevent tragedy when his lover, Sue Hsu, is murdered by members of a street gang as the couple dines in a Chinese restaurant. Sanchez kills the two men directly responsible, but he wants revenge on the gang leader who ordered the hit, to which he and Hsu were innocent bystanders. Despite his personal stake in the case, Sanchez becomes a key member in a joint Toronto-New York strike force charged with dismantling the two key gangs involved in trafficking illegal aliens. One by one, Sanchez and his crew arrest the street soldiers until eventually they find someone willing to turn on the well-protected superiors. Mahoney, who retired as a captain after 25 years in the NYPD, knows the nuts and bolts of a sweeping multijurisdictional police operation. He is also able to portray complex, believable characters struggling mightily with their own muddled lives. Fans of William Caunitz, Robert Daley, and Ed McBain will savor this top-drawer procedural. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Fans of William Caunitz, Robert Daley, and Ed McBain will savor this top-drawer procedural."--Booklist
"[An] ambitious thriller...[with] a perfect ending."--Publishers Weekly
"The Two Chinatowns has clearly been written by an author with real procedural experience."--Richard Bernstein, The New York Times
Book Description
Caught in the grip of ruthless Asian gangs, the Chinatowns of New York City and Toronto are the North American headquarters for a worldwide criminal network specializing in extortion, drugs, immigrant smuggling, and murder.
Detective Cisco Sanchez personifies the city he protects. Brash and cocky, he's also one of the best investigators in an elite division of the NYPD. But when his fiancee is gunned down in a Toronto restaurant by elements of a feared Vietnamese gang known as Born To Kill, Cisco's next assignment is extremely dangerous--and extremely personal.
Teamed with his partner Brian McKenna, Cisco has to battle departmental rivalries, vicious street killers, and heavyweight financiers as corrupt as they are connected to follow the investigation around the globe and all the way to the top of Hong Kong's organized crime world.
About the Author
DAN MAHONEY was born and raised in New York City. After serving with the Marine Corps in Vietnam, he joined the New York City Police Department, where he worked for twenty-five years before retiring as a captain. He is the author of five previous novels and lives in Manhattan.
Two Chinatowns FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Cisco Sanchez is the self-proclaimed "best detective in New York " - better even than Brian McKenna, whom Cisco considers the luckiest detective. Like McKenna, Cisco solves cases while occasionally driving his NYPD bosses crazy. Then he meets his match in Sue Hsu, an airline stewardess who caught Cisco's eye after providing evidence in a murder investigation. To everyone's amazement, the two get engaged and plan to marry." "But while celebrating their future over dinner in Toronto's Chinatown, Sue is murdered by members of the street gang Born to Kill. Cisco vows to avenge her death and throws himself into the case of his life. Pursuing one of the killers, he begins to uncover the dangerous underworld of gangs in the two Chinatowns of Toronto and New York. A history emerges of kidnapping, extortion, drug smuggling, contract killing, and the transport of human cargo between China and North America - a criminal network more powerful than the Mafia and virtually unknown to all but the silent businessmen and frightened workers in Asian communities."--BOOK JACKET.
FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
A shift to the wings for Det. First Grade Brian McKenna, leaving center stage to Det. First Grade Cisco Sanchez as Mahoney's authoritative NYPD series gains a so-so fifth (Black and White, 1999, etc.). The self-styled "best detective in the world," Cisco, who on occasion is pleased to refer to himself in the heroic third person, clearly doesn't hesitate to put his best foot forward. Among other useful attributes, he claims unmatched determination—though some of his superiors downgrade that quality to rampant bull-headedness—plus the kind of combustibility that's calculated and unnerving, sometimes even to his friends. So when 14K, a notorious and far-flung 300-year-old band of Asian racketeers, kills the love of Cisco's life, it figures to turn into a major bad-guy mistake. Never mind that Johnny Eng, 14K's head dragon, is too smart to have deliberately awakened the sleeping dragon in Cisco. The point, for Cisco, is that Sue Hsu died violently at the hands of an Eng henchman, and that puts Johnny squarely on the spot. Working closely with his best friend McKenna and a team of dedicated detectives based in Toronto, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Cisco goes after the infamous gangster and his seemingly invincible triad. Methodically, Dragon Johnny is stripped of top-notch aides as Cisco and Co. jail a string of them for lengthy terms. But it's only when they catch world-class hit-man King Kong Chen and force him to cough up closely held triadic trade secrets that 14K's glitter pales to a flicker. Finally, Johnny and Cisco confront each other mano a mano, but by then, in a denouement drained of suspense, it's super cop vs. toothless dragon and strictly no contest. Static characters,pedestrian prose. Mahoney, a former NYPD captain, is, as always, at his best with the police procedural stuff, at his weakest with the novelizing.
Art & Photography
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