Chinese Chop

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A01=Juanita Sheridan
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Asian American
Author_Juanita Sheridan
automatic-update
boarding house
Category1=Fiction
Category=FF
Category=FFS
Chinese American
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_crime
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
Golden Age
Hawaii
Janice Cameron
Language_English
Lily Wu
mystery
New York City
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
rooming house
softlaunch

Product details

  • ISBN 9781631943140
  • Dimensions: 139 x 203mm
  • Publication Date: 26 Sep 2024
  • Publisher: Felony & Mayhem
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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With World War II only barely in the rear view mirror, New York apartments are scarcer than hen’s teeth.

Janice Cameron has moved to the City to be a writer, trading Honolulu’s sun and flowers for Manhattan in the grip of icy winter. She’s imagined her own cunning little flat, a little table by the window, a little lace cloth...fat chance! Her own flat is completely out of the question, and in fact she’s going to have to share a boarding-house bedroom with a perfect stranger.

At least the stranger is perfect: Lily Wu is beautiful, exquisitely dressed, and swathed in mystery. But Janice hasn’t even unpacked before a rather less exquisite mystery intrudes. True, the handyman wasn’t brilliant at maintaining the boiler, but murder seems a rather extreme response.

In the best Golden Age tradition, the rooming house is crammed with intriguing suspects, from the tortured musician to the French emigree to the actress with a face for radio. Lily and Janice would much prefer to leave, but they’ve nowhere to go. Solving the murder seems the best possible option, especially since if someone were arrested and taken away...well, that would free up a room, now wouldn’t it?

Juanita Sheridan (nee Light), born in Oklahoma in 1906, spent her childhood in boarding schools and traversing the American West unsupervised. By her early 20s, broke and with a baby, she landed in Los Angeles and hustled hard writing (and selling!) screenplays. When little Ross was adopted by his grandmother, Sheridan lit out for Hawai'i to write in earnest. Escaping an unsuccessful marriage, she left Hawai'i in 1941. After stays in New York and California, she eventually remarried and landed in Mexico, working as a translator and knocking back a regular cocktail of booze and pills. In 1974 her son received a postcard informing him of her death. Incurably restless and likely a terrible mother, Juanita Sheridan made a vital contribution to the mystery genre: her protagonist Lily Wu was the first Asian woman to anchor a series. At a time when Asian characters were often clumsy caricatures, Sheridan depicted Lily and her multiethnic supporting players as nuanced, fully realized human beings.

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