“Formidable…Ava Lee is unbeatable at just about everything….She’s perfect.” Toronto StarMeet Ava Lee, alluring but deadly, with a mind like a steel trap, as she chases millions of dollars and dangerous criminals around the globe in this exotic and fast-paced new crime series by Ian Hamilton.In The Wild Beasts of Wuhan, Wong Changxing, a rich Chinese powerbroker, has just been bilked out of … Wong Changxing, a rich Chinese powerbroker, has just been bilked out of $100 million in an elaborate art forgery con. His one hope of recovering the money, and of saving face, is Ava Lee a forensic accountant with a talent for tracking down untraceable funds. With the help of her mentor, the Triad-connected Uncle, Ava traces the provenance of the meticulously forged paintings to Denmark, the Faroe Islands, New York, and London. As she infiltrates one of the most prestigious auction houses in the world, she uncovers a massive web of corruption, where high art and high-stakes fraud threaten more than just her client’s business this is one scam that could get her killed. Ava Lee is one of the most scintillating, unique heroines to come along in years.
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While we’re used to cozy mysteries led by such unlikely sleuths as quilters and cats, we usually expect our less-cozy mysteries to have protagonists with more qualifications for the job: cops, ex-cops, PIs, and the like. But there’s a growing sub-genre featuring crime-busting accountants. David Dodge, active in the 1940s, may be the father of this sub-genre. Other authors who’ve played in this pool include Dick Francis (Risk), Gail Farrelly, Marshall Jevons, Colleen Cross and Ashley Fontainne. More to the point, there’s also Ian Hamilton, whose series heroine Ava Lee makes her third appearance in The Wild Beasts of Wuhan.
Ava’s a Hong Kong-born, Toronto-raised forensic accountant who specializes in finding and recovering money lost to fraud by people who have reasons not to engage the police. She works for Uncle — who may be connected to the Triads — and takes a cut of what she extracts from the scammers. In this episode, she’s called on to figure out who sold megawealthy Wuhan kingmaker Wong Changxing over $70 million in forged Fauvist paintings (the titular “wild beasts,” as the Fauvists were known to 19th-Century art critics). Her hunt takes her most of the way around the world as she pieces together the plot. (If your around-the-world mystery-reading challenge includes the Faroe Islands, this book’s for you.)
Ava’s acceptable if not overly engaging company. She’s smart and capable, pretty much always comes out on top, is an experienced globetrotter, and is (of course) beautiful enough for nearly all the men she runs across to come on to her. Not that it does them much good: she likes girls, a fact that makes no essential difference in her character other than the gender of the person she chooses for the obligatory one-nighter partway through her travels.
This is a straightforward follow-the-money story that Ava solves in a fairly straightforward way. If you like lots of twists and turns in your mystery plots, you won’t really find them here. The art-forgery angle is interesting and you’ll learn a few things about the art market. However, the criminal machinations aren’t all that opaque, and Ava unearths them through doggedness rather than brilliant leaps of deduction, risky B&E, or applications of physical force. Just as in TV cop shows, the perps mostly fess up with minimal hesitation. A lot of her progress comes courtesy of Uncle’s guanxi, or clout. No matter where she goes, Ava’s able to get doors opened and cooperation extracted through a phone call to Uncle, who apparently has nearly limitless reach as well as the ability to work as fast as Ava’s nonstop travel schedule. In retrospect, it all seems awfully easy. Ava spends more time in transit or in the shower (say what you will about her, she’s impressively clean) than she does detecting.
The back-cover copy promises something like a thriller — Ava is “alluring but deadly,” there are “dangerous criminals,” and “this is one scam that could get her killed,” — but you won’t get anything like that. The greatest physical threat Ava faces is from a group of drunken Russian fishermen, easily disposed of. Even the touted “massive web of corruption” is oversold. Save for some adult language and the lack of recipes, this could be a cozy.
The Wild Beasts of Wuhan isn’t a bad read if you ignore the back cover and go into the novel with the proper expectations. It’s a mild-mannered mystery in which the deadliest weapons are cell phones and laptops and the greatest existential threats to Our Heroine are jet lag and airline food. You get to watch Ava put the pieces together, and if you pay attention, maybe you can solve the puzzle before she does. If that appeals to you, there are six installments in this series. I may read another of these sometime…perhaps in an airplane, where Ava spends most of her time.