In early-1900s Los Angeles– an era of courting, ragtime, suffragettes, and widespread corruption– a socialite turned police matron tracks down the murderer of a white woman in Chinatown, while trying to prevent the outbreak of a bloody tong war.Los Angeles, 1908. In Chinatown, the most dangerous beat in Los Angeles, police matron Anna Blanc and her former sweetheart, Detective Joe Singer, … Detective Joe Singer, discover the body of a white missionary woman, stuffed in a trunk in the apartment of her Chinese lover. If news about the murder gets out, there will be a violent backlash against the Chinese. Joe and Anna work to solve the crime quietly and keep the death a secret, reluctantly helped by the good-looking Mr. Jones, a prominent local leader.
Meanwhile, the kidnapping of two slave girls fuels existing tensions, leaving Chinatown poised on the verge of a bloody tong war. Joe orders Anna to stay away, but Anna is determined to solve the crime before news of the murder is leaked and Chinatown explodes.
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A fun read. I enjoy the throwback to another era.
Anna Blanc, a lowly police matron in the LAPD in 1908, is a force to be reckoned with when she gets caught up in the murder of a Caucasian woman in Chinatown. Relations between the Chinese immigrants—who can’t own property, vote, or marry anyone but a Chinese spouse—threaten to turn into an all-out war if word get out that the dead woman’s lover was Chinese.
Kincheloe paints a vivid picture of a society far removed from Anna’s former life of privilege. Her love—and lust—for the police chief’s son is refreshing and a driving force in Anna’s determination to “detect.” According to the author, many of the scenes stem from real life—but the first female LAPD office was not, apparently anything like the irrepressible Anna.
Intriguing female detective and LA China town murder based on real historical people and events.
Great glimpse into the mores and challenges of the times. Eagerly awaiting more from this author .
This book is the second in a series of three about the same main character, Anna Blanc. She is impulsive and unpredictable, and the results are hilarious. All three books area great. I highly recommend them.
Spectacular fun. Anna Blanc is an original. A thoroughly delightful read.
The intrigue and danger of 1908 Los Angeles propels the pages of this well-researched, fast-paced fictional mystery by author Jennifer Kincheloe. This is the second in her Anna Blanc mystery series, a protagonist who is one of the first women working on the police force. Her investigative skills are put to the challenge when she and her former sweetheart, police officer Joe Singer, discover a body in notorious Chinatown — The Woman in the Camphor Trunk. This book is based on a true crime story, and it also deals with the discrimination and racial tension mostly in the Chinese community in Los Angeles at that time.
The plentiful details about the historical setting provide a rich sense of the societal and environmental elements impacting the characters. You’ll simply absorb so much interesting information about this fascinating time in the growth of this city, and also its unique culture. It’s an incredible backdrop for the dynamics of these fascinating characters that, each in their own way pursue justice.
Anna has an insatiable desire to solve crimes, and this passion, matched with her endless energy and insightful analytic skills and the reader discovers a thoughtful, intelligent chase to resolution. Of course, that doesn’t always mean that Anna plays strictly by the rules. She is found on occasion to follow instinctive impulses and reactions, even when it comes to crime scenes and handling evidence, which can get her into dicey and dangerous situations that make for suspenseful reading.
Other characters, with their own struggles and goals, are a delight to read about. It’s so interesting to learn about the working conventions of the time that the police and criminals work with. It’s also interesting to see the evolution of non-working relationships between characters.
Author Jennifer Kincheloe was a research scientist with an MPH from Loma Linda University and a Ph.D. from UCLA, where she was on the research faculty. Her delight in reading drove her to write. She was off to a great start when her first book in this series, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc ,was a finalist in the Lefty Awards for Best Historical Mystery, The Colorado Author’s League Award for Best Genre Fiction, the Macavity Sue Feder Award for Historical Mystery, the Mystery and Mayhem Award, and is the WINNER of the Colorado Gold for Best Mystery. Book three in the Anna Blanc mystery series is coming out in Fall of 2018.
And if you want to hear more from the author, listen to Kendall & Cooper Talk Mysteries with Jennifer Kincheloe.
Tong Wars!
Chinatown in Los Angeles in the early 20th century was a hotbed of illegal activities and “benevolent protective societies”–Tongs–which operated on much the same principals as the Mafia. Missionaries, largely women, provided English lessons (reading and speaking) as they preached. Into this world comes a defacto suffragette who dreams of becoming a police detective even though women are still largely chattel, whether white, black or “Mongolian.” I haven’t read the first book and am aware there are lots of background details I may be missing; nonetheless I had no trouble enjoying this volume as a richly detailed, standalone mystery. Narrator Moira Quirk portrays exactly the right bounce, brilliance and bafflement one might expect of a disgraced debutante as well as nicely voicing the other characters. I had a lot of fun with this!
I love reading cozy mysteries and have read a lot of them. That being said, Anna Blanc has to be one of the most annoying main characters that I have encountered in a long, long time!
When a body is discovered in a trunk in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1908, Anna is tasked with interviewing a Chinese woman who is a witness. She is partnered with her former lover, Detective Joe Singer, since it isn’t safe for a white woman to go to Chinatown alone. When they arrive at the scene, they discover that the body is not a Chinese man, as reported, but a white woman, possibly a missionary.
I enjoyed the history of Chinatown, the tensions between the Chinese and the whites, and the descriptions of the area. The writer was able to make the reader feel like they were walking down the streets of Chinatown.
However, Anna Blanc is another story. I know that she is supposed to be a former rich debutante who has been disowned by her father, but she has to be one of the dumbest supposed detectives to ever grace the pages of a book! Some of the scenes were just too overboard in describing her clothing, her mannerisms, etc. I understand that the author was trying to convey how much of a fish out of water that she is, but enough is enough! Much of the action is just too unbelievable for me to swallow. How many times does a young woman venture into the dangers of Chinatown alone, putting her life at risk, before she learns that isn’t a good idea?
And, her on again, off again love affair with Joe was drawn out throughout the entire book to the point that I really didn’t care what happened. In my opinion, the book could have been condensed a lot without losing any of the story. I sped up my Kindle a lot in order to get through the book faster because I started getting bored with the repetitious nature of the story.
The narrator, Moira Quirk, does a great job and kept me listening long past what I would have done with a lesser narrator. All in all, not a bad book, but not a great book. I would recommend it for those who truly love a bumbling MC who cares more about her appearance than a good mystery or main characters with in-depth personalities.
I was given the opportunity to listen to the Audible version of this book by the narrator/publisher/author and chose to review it.
I was a bit annoyed with the heroine She reminded me much of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in the movies, sort of daffy and scattered brain about certain things.