Mongkok Station by Jake Needham
A city that’s falling apart, a man who’s falling apart, and a girl with a secret past who has disappeared without a trace. What complicates things is that the missing girl is the daughter of one of the most powerful men in America. She just doesn’t know it.
Hong Kong is teetering on the edge of anarchy. Violent street battles are raging between riot police and mobs demanding democracy.
Samuel Tay is a legendary Singapore homicide detective. He’s retired, but it was purely involuntary. It seems his legend made a lot of senior officers uneasy and they wanted him gone. John August is an American who has shadowy connections to the intelligence community. He’s done Tay a lot of favors in the past, and Tay owes him one.
When August asks Tay to come to Hong Kong to track down the missing girl, Tay doesn’t much want to go. August and his friends deal in the fate of nations. Tay deals with personal tragedies, one human being at a time. Even worse, he doesn’t like Hong Kong and, to be completely honest, he’s not all that fond of Americans either.
Regardless, Tay answers August’s call for help. He’s a man who honors his debts, his forced retirement really sucks, and there’s this woman… well, there’s always a woman in there somewhere, isn’t there?
August thinks that the triads may have kidnapped the missing girl. Tay doesn’t have the sources to get inside the Hong Kong triads so August teams him up with Jack Shepherd, an American lawyer living in Hong Kong who just might be the only white guy on the planet the triads trust.
Tay is considerably less than thrilled by that. Here he is in a city that seems only moments away from going up in flames, everybody is certain the missing girl is dead, and now he’s stuck with all these Americans. Can things get any worse than that? Oh yes, they absolutely can.
Tay has developed symptoms that indicate he may be very seriously ill. For everybody, there is always a last time around the track whether they know it when they make the trip or not. As Tay’s symptoms worsen, it begins to dawn on him that this missing girl just might be his own last time around.
If this really is the end for him, Samuel Tay vows he’s going to go out with one hell of a bang.
Author Bio:
Jake Needham is an American lawyer who became a screen and television writer through a series of coincidences too ridiculous for anyone to believe. When he realized he didn’t really like movies and television all that much, he started writing crime novels.
Mr. Needham has lived in Asia for thirty years and has published twelve novels that have collectively sold more than three-quarters of a million copies. He, his wife, and their two sons now divide their time between homes in Bangkok and Washington DC.
You can learn more about Mr. Needham and his novels at his official website: www.JakeNeedhamNovels.com.
Social Media:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JakeNeedham
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JakeNeedhamNovels/
Website: https://www.jakeneedhamnovels.com/
Purchase Links:
Amazon UK (paperback): https://amzn.to/32OrWhA
Amazon UK (ebook): https://amzn.to/2IJHL26
Amazon US (paperback): https://amzn.to/32P4jp2
Amazon US (ebook): https://amzn.to/3nrl6qc
Review
Mongkok Station is a great thriller set in the claustrophobic and at time overwhelming Hong Kong. It’s the sixth book in the series but it can definitely be read as a stand-alone as I haven’t managed to read the start of the series yet. It steadily built up the picture and then hit us with all the punches at the end.
I think I enjoyed this book as I have the same feelings about Hong Kong as the main character Tay. I just didn’t enjoy it when I was there and I also love Singapore so I’m totally in sink with him! I did like the narrative behind the book and all the contemporary references to the umbrella protests of last year. It’s a shame that Joshua Wong had to plead guilty to organising them in order to spend less time in prison. Anyway…. that’s my politics showing! It was also really good to see a different light to the triads, well in a way.
Tay was a great character. It would be interesting to see how he was in the Singapore police actually, another excuse to read the previous books. I like how he was slightly damaged but not to the extent of a noir detective. That has become so cliche for me. I loved the scene with his mum!
This is a great introduction (for me anyhow) to this series and I loved the narrative and the characters. It was a well balanced and intricate plot that left you guessing right till the end.
