Review of Stealing the Dragon by Tim Maleeny

[Gumshoe Carl]

When a freighter ship carrying Chinese refugees runs aground on San Francisco’s famous Alcatraz, Private Detective Cape Weathers becomes interested. This is not the kind of case that he usually takes on but when it is determined that the crew of the freighter ship were all murdered by a professional assassin, Cape begins to worry. The murders look eerily similar to the work of his side-kick Sally, a half Japanese half Irish-American ninja like assassin. When Sally suddenly goes missing and when the FBI and San Francisco police begin to pressure Cape, he smells foul-play and goes on a hunt to find Sally.

Along the way, Cape comes into contact with some very interesting, yet quirky characters, to include a successful Chinese businessman who is determined to become the next Mayor of San Francisco, a wheel chair bound paraplegic named Sloth who can hack into any data file known to man, and a nervous, electricity fearing reporter who knows how to ask all the hard questions and find the right answers. Along the way, Cape finds himself in several predicaments, to include icing down the body of a Chinese bodyguard that was stowed in Cape’s car trunk. Cape has a smart aleck line or comeback for every situation and I found myself laughing out loud throughout the book.

While reading Stealing the Dragon by Tim Maleeny, I often had images of the Chinese Symbols Yin and Yang in my mind. Not because the novel is set in San Francisco’s China Town or Hong Kong, but because Maleeny’s protagonists Cape Weathers and Sally were two opposing but complementary entities. Maleeny successful tells the story by depicting each protagonist’s point of view in rotating chapters and at the end of the book the two stories eventually collide. In Cape Weathers, the author has created one of the funniest, most interesting private detectives to come along since David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter. In Sally, Maleeny has devised a professional assassin side-kick filled with international intrigue but also a character that seemed very real because the author takes the time in this first novel to describe Sally’s childhood and teenage years in Hong Kong. Needless to say, the stage has been successfully set for many Cape and Sally novels to come.

Along with the incredible book cover depicting a beautiful woman with an intricate tattoo along her back, Stealing the Dragon is a rare first novel that seems to have it all. There are original, yet intriguing characters. There are the settings of San Francisco’s dark Chinatown and Hong Kong. There is an interesting plotline that made the chapters flow almost effortlessly. Perhaps Maleeny’s greatest success with his first novel is that he is able to tell a serious story while at the same time, humor the reader through the hilarious words that flow from Cape Weather’s mouth.

Stealing the Dragon his HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and goes to the top of my list of favorite books by a new author. Maleeny’s second Cape Weather’s book, entitled Beating the Babushka will be released by Midnight Ink in October of 2007. I’m anxious to see what kind of trouble Cape and Sally get into plus look forward to a storyline which hopefully describes Cape Weathers to his faithful readers.