Tangled Web UK Review February 2008
Bad Traffic by
Simon Lewis
pbk out January 08
(Sort of Books)
at £7.99
Simon Lewis, born in Wales in 1971, has lived in Asia, and is a self-confessed watcher of pulp Hong-Kong thrillers and martial arts flicks. This, his second novel after GO, exploits his addiction to these art forms.
Inspector Jian of the Chinese police has arrived in Leeds to hunt for his missing daughter. She is supposed to be a student there, but his last phone call from her was a cry for help, cut off in mid-plea. His problem is that he cannot speak English, he doesn't understand the English culture and ways of existence. His simple solution is to leap on to a table in the University canteen and shout out loud for assistance in Mandarin. Before the security guards drag him down, he finds someone who does understand, and his quest begins.
He finds her class teacher, who says she has not been in class for months. He talks to a Chinese girl at her digs, and finds she has disappeared from there. She may have worked in a Chinese takeaway. Unfortunately, the owner only speaks Cantonese as he is from Hong-Kong. But from clues he spots Jian knows Mei Ling, his daughter, had worked there. Somehow she is tied in with a local Chinese hoodlum called Black Fort.
Black Fort is an importer of illegal labour from China, and Ding Yi is one of his latest batch. Ding has been separated from his wife, and gets mixed up with the nefarious deeds of the gang master Kevin. Gradually, Jian and Ding Yi's paths cross, as Jian goes on a violent spree that spreads from Morecambe Bay to East Anglia in search of revenge for the supposed death of his daughter.
Lewis gives us a picture of two conflicting cultures through the eyes of the two Chinese. Their own is seen from opposite sides – a powerful police chief, and a scared and poor peasant. The culture they are blundering through – our own – is viewed from their perspective, giving it a new and intriguing slant. There is no need to rationalise the swathe of violence that follows in Jian's wake – he is merely acting as he would have done in his own country. It is the paper equivalent of one of Lewis's martial arts flicks. Besides, it is the dirty underside of England that is the cause of the horror – the gangmasters and exploitation of humans turned into slaves that the death of the cockle- pickers in Morecambe Bay showed us recently. This is a fast-paced, powerhouse of a novel leaving the reader wanting to hear more of Inspector Jian.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
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