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Bad Traffic
by Simon Lewis
Reviewed by Isaac Stone Fish
"This man have come from China to find his daughter who have some trouble. He does not speak English." The novel begins with this phrase as a tough, befuddled Chinese inspector named Jian grasps an airplane boarding pass with this message scribbled on the back. By setting Britain as the strange land of this mystery/thriller, Simon Lewis tweaks the conventions of the genre, casting a Chinese as the anti-hero and Britain as his backdrop.
Inspector Jian, a mid-ranking, semi-corrupt cop from cold and somber Heilongjiang Province, is bringing a mistress to see his new apartment when his phone suddenly rings. It's his daughter, Wei Wei, a Tourism and Leisure student at Leeds University in London. "Dad, help me, help me!" she sobs. Before he has time to respond, "a clatter, a clunk, a gurgle," and the phone goes silent. As dread settles in his stomach, Jian begins to act, getting himself a visa and flying to Britain the next day.
Jian follows the thread of her disappearance, first to her college, where she's been absent for months, then to her apartment, which she left months ago without paying the rent, to a Chinese restaurant where she used to waitress. Here he meets the man who becomes his nemesis, the debonair, evil Black Fort, a Hong Kong gangster and people-smuggler. Jian spends the rest of the novel trying to find Black Fort, convinced that it will lead to his daughter.
Lewis, the author of the Rough Guide to China, Beijing, and Shanghai, spent years travelling through Asia, good preparation for describing societal interactions between different cultures. At the university, Jian ponders whether to offer the guard a cigarette to build a connection, as would be common in China. In the university cafeteria, he jumps on the table and starts shouting, asking if anyone knows Mandarin. "Making a scene didn't worry him, he didn't feel any pull of social convention here. These people weren't his people, he could make monkey noises and it wouldn't matter." The combination of a lack of shared language and lack of shared culture frees Jian from convention, and his missing daughter coupled with his lack of cultural accountability is a refreshing excuse for Jian tromping about London, breaking into gas stations, waving a gun, and punching people.
Jian eventually finds a translator, Ding Ming, a failed English teacher from Fujian province. Ding and his wife pay snakeheads to smuggle them to Britain to work as laborers. The first few days don't go as planned: he's separated from his wife, and the British boss forces him to be his 'boy'. Fleeing, Ding encounters Jian, who demands that he help him find the people who took his daughter. Black Fort is the snakehead who brought Ding to the Britain, and Ding, unwillingly because he fears for his wife's safety, eventually leads Jian to Black Fort and to the expected climatic final scene.
Lewis's writing is strongest when he moves the story with short sentences (as in this description of Ding's arrival in England: "Ding Ming burst out from his box like a birthday surprise") as opposed to sentences sometimes overloaded with adjectives ("It had not been a convenient time, he had been at a noisy banquet with portly dignitaries, he had downed a lot of toasts, and now he guiltily reflected that perhaps his attempts to jolly her along had seemed brusque and formulaic.")
In the latter part of the book, the narration follows Wei Wei as she quits school, and works as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant, where she meets Black Fort. He woos her and convinces her to move into a bedsit in Liverpool. Worried that he might be cheating on her, she spies on him one day and sees the snakeheads opening up the boxes of smuggled Chinese that didn't survive: "An expression of bug-eyed terror was frozen on the waxy face of the man on the ground. A second body flopped over the edge of the container, arms dangling." Because she witnesses this, and before Black Fort drugs her and kidnaps her, she makes the call that brings her father to Britain.
After searching for hours and hours, Jian and Ding find the snakehead's lair. Jian shoots his way through the hideout and through Black Fort, frees the captives, promises his new buddy Ding Ming a job in his hometown in Northeastern China, and speeds off with his daughter to the international airport. Lewis doesn't reveal if Jian and Wei Wei make it back to the London: "Another long journey was beginning-he could not rest yet." With Jian such a compelling, unorthodox character, the sequel would be welcome.
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Isaac Stone Fish lives in Beijing and is involved in literature and media.
by Simon Lewis
Reviewed by Isaac Stone Fish
"This man have come from China to find his daughter who have some trouble. He does not speak English." The novel begins with this phrase as a tough, befuddled Chinese inspector named Jian grasps an airplane boarding pass with this message scribbled on the back. By setting Britain as the strange land of this mystery/thriller, Simon Lewis tweaks the conventions of the genre, casting a Chinese as the anti-hero and Britain as his backdrop.
Inspector Jian, a mid-ranking, semi-corrupt cop from cold and somber Heilongjiang Province, is bringing a mistress to see his new apartment when his phone suddenly rings. It's his daughter, Wei Wei, a Tourism and Leisure student at Leeds University in London. "Dad, help me, help me!" she sobs. Before he has time to respond, "a clatter, a clunk, a gurgle," and the phone goes silent. As dread settles in his stomach, Jian begins to act, getting himself a visa and flying to Britain the next day.
Jian follows the thread of her disappearance, first to her college, where she's been absent for months, then to her apartment, which she left months ago without paying the rent, to a Chinese restaurant where she used to waitress. Here he meets the man who becomes his nemesis, the debonair, evil Black Fort, a Hong Kong gangster and people-smuggler. Jian spends the rest of the novel trying to find Black Fort, convinced that it will lead to his daughter.
Lewis, the author of the Rough Guide to China, Beijing, and Shanghai, spent years travelling through Asia, good preparation for describing societal interactions between different cultures. At the university, Jian ponders whether to offer the guard a cigarette to build a connection, as would be common in China. In the university cafeteria, he jumps on the table and starts shouting, asking if anyone knows Mandarin. "Making a scene didn't worry him, he didn't feel any pull of social convention here. These people weren't his people, he could make monkey noises and it wouldn't matter." The combination of a lack of shared language and lack of shared culture frees Jian from convention, and his missing daughter coupled with his lack of cultural accountability is a refreshing excuse for Jian tromping about London, breaking into gas stations, waving a gun, and punching people.
Jian eventually finds a translator, Ding Ming, a failed English teacher from Fujian province. Ding and his wife pay snakeheads to smuggle them to Britain to work as laborers. The first few days don't go as planned: he's separated from his wife, and the British boss forces him to be his 'boy'. Fleeing, Ding encounters Jian, who demands that he help him find the people who took his daughter. Black Fort is the snakehead who brought Ding to the Britain, and Ding, unwillingly because he fears for his wife's safety, eventually leads Jian to Black Fort and to the expected climatic final scene.
Lewis's writing is strongest when he moves the story with short sentences (as in this description of Ding's arrival in England: "Ding Ming burst out from his box like a birthday surprise") as opposed to sentences sometimes overloaded with adjectives ("It had not been a convenient time, he had been at a noisy banquet with portly dignitaries, he had downed a lot of toasts, and now he guiltily reflected that perhaps his attempts to jolly her along had seemed brusque and formulaic.")
In the latter part of the book, the narration follows Wei Wei as she quits school, and works as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant, where she meets Black Fort. He woos her and convinces her to move into a bedsit in Liverpool. Worried that he might be cheating on her, she spies on him one day and sees the snakeheads opening up the boxes of smuggled Chinese that didn't survive: "An expression of bug-eyed terror was frozen on the waxy face of the man on the ground. A second body flopped over the edge of the container, arms dangling." Because she witnesses this, and before Black Fort drugs her and kidnaps her, she makes the call that brings her father to Britain.
After searching for hours and hours, Jian and Ding find the snakehead's lair. Jian shoots his way through the hideout and through Black Fort, frees the captives, promises his new buddy Ding Ming a job in his hometown in Northeastern China, and speeds off with his daughter to the international airport. Lewis doesn't reveal if Jian and Wei Wei make it back to the London: "Another long journey was beginning-he could not rest yet." With Jian such a compelling, unorthodox character, the sequel would be welcome.
--
Isaac Stone Fish lives in Beijing and is involved in literature and media.
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