SKULDUGGERY

This early novel from the author of the much admired Annie Laurance and Henrie O series, first published in Britain in 1984, stars San Francisco physical anthropologist Dr. Ellen Christie, whose romantic dinner plans are interrupted when young Jimmy Lee bursts in, empties his backpack, and asks her to assess some aged bone fragments. Ellen recognizes them immediately as belonging to Peking Man, an archeological treasure that disappeared from China at the end of WWII. Eager to snare the cache of bones for her museum, Ellen accompanies Jimmy to his Chinatown home, where his sexy lawyer brother Dan appears just in advance of two thugs. Jimmy takes off with the bones, one step ahead of the goons, and the chase is on. When Ellen and Dan retrace Jimmy's movements of the past two days, they encounter Miss Chow, who originally brought the bones from the east, and Wilkie Lee, owner of the upscale Middle Kingdom Gallery, who decided to steal them rather than buy them from Jimmy. There'll be time for a spot of torture, the Chinese New Year's Day parade, and a break-in at City Hall before Jimmy and the bones are safe, and Ellen and Dan are making romantic dinner plans of their own.

A finely detailed examination of squalid living conditions for the poor and aged in Chinatown, and of hostile Chinese/Japanese relations pre- and post-war, is undercut by flat and repetitive writing.