Tiger Balm Garden Twilight – Gloria T. August

Rating: 5 stars

The good: An interesting second story in the series with a lovely amount of depth

The bad: It felt a little dense at times

The long: Second stories in a series have traditionally been a thorn in the author’s side. When I first began, I had a bit of fright that this would be. The first book was masterful with pacing and characters that I didn’t know what to expect. The first chapter is a bit of scenic description and philosophy, and I was expecting that to be a bit of authorial rambling about Chinese identity and history in relationship to the Occident before getting on with the story. Also, there were a few things that raised eyebrows because they seemed to step on those old views of ethnic boundaries. But it wasn’t like that at all. The author is quite thoughtful and cognizant of these issue, and the threads of this are developed at every step of the book. They pay off in a nice way, especially considering the commentary at the end of the book. I enjoyed the experience and came out of it feeling like I had learned something. In addition, I spoke to the author and understand that revisions are being made to fix the spelling/grammatical/formatting discrepancies.

Okay, now I’ll talk about the plot and the structure. This time, our protagonists, Olive, Judith, Jack, and (I’m honoring the author and her use of the Oxford comma here) Judith are joined by one of their friends, Harold, in Hong Kong, specifically Kowloon. He tells them a story about being inadvertently used to smuggle stolen historical artifacts, and our young detectives go to work. They inform the police, and they eagerly volunteer to help them unravel the mystery. With black market smugglers, corrupt museum officials and a kingpin who oppresses everyone under his thumb, the book reminds the reader of China’s incredibly elaborate history.