A MAN WITH NO TIME

Hard-boiled Simeon Grist (Incinerator, etc.) now rushes in to help longtime love Eleanor Chan when her niece and nephew are kidnapped for what seem (to Grist) inscrutable Chinese reasons—but clearly the Chan family knows something and clearly it involves Uncle Lo, also missing. As Grist searches for the kids, he bumps into two separate illegal alien stories: one concerning Uncle Lo and aged Esther Summerson, a retired missionary; the other concerning work slaves indentured to the likes of sadist Charlie Wah. The kids are returned, but Grist has to find their dad, Horace, who's gone in search of Uncle Lo, thereby putting both himself and Grist in the path of various Chinese protection societies and Vietnamese thugs and Thai prostitutes. To break up the various slave rings, Grist puts together a black gang and, with split-second derring-do, waylays payoffs to the Chinese, liberates the slaves, and overcomes a spot of torture meant to cripple him. Memorable for a baby-faced Vietnamese assassin, a dateless teenager, a gruesome double murder, and Hallinan's droll depiction of the Asian communities warring in California. If you can handle the rough stuff: a lippy, fast-paced read.