4 Stars from me
Before getting into the story – I have to say that I was utterly fascinated by the insight into the conflict in Hong Kong. It seemed to me that this was genuinely and brutally portrayed, surely by someone who has witnessed it first hand?
I enjoyed Tay as a lead character and his interactions with the enigmatic Claire were superb – written with great humanity.
The story of a missing girl – who just happens to be the secret daughter of one of the most important men in America – in the frankly terrifying region of Mongkok had buckets of intrigue and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The abundance of ‘experts’ and ‘mystery men’ that Claire can conjure up on a whim was excellent and added to the mystery and intrigue.
This is my first introduction to Tay – I am most late to the party as I can see this is book 6 – and while I am sure it pays to have read the first 5, I found I was drawn straight into the story and I look forward to reading more by this author.
Mongkok Station (An Inspector Samuel Tay Novel #6) by Jake Needham #MongkokStation #InspectorSamuelTay @JakeNeedham @damppebbles #damppebblesblogtours
Book Blurb: 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.
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Thanks so much xx