This book was a goodreads.com first read contest win.

Okay I am wondering if I read the first book if it would help me to understand this book. To me this book was hard to follow and understand everything. it did not seem like the characters were fully developed. I was not impressed enough with this book to be interested in reading anything else by this author. ( )

Year of The Dog is the 2nd Jack Yu book and my 1st. I won this from Goodreads. I'm kind of confused by the book mainly because none of the crimes seem to tie into each other like they do in detective novels and the chapters seemed to jump all around. The book starts off with a family suicide and then was quickly dropped. Then it goes into a long description of Chinese gangs and the triads and then you get a glimpse of some of the people. Not enough to really get to know them. Jack does alot of reminiscing about his father who has passed, and restaurants and food he would buy his father, maybe eat maybe not. He doesn't seem to have a car, either personal or police so he either walks to crime scenes or I guess takes a bus which I find ridiculous. There isn't much detective work and hardly any people interaction. Jack seems to be a loner and is pretty much depressing to read about. That said I had already bought the first book before I read the second and I will give it a try but Jack will have to lighten up a lot before I buy another. ( )

In the fine tradition of Chester Himes and his Harlem novels, The Year of the Dog is an excellent hard-boiled slice of life from Henry Chang. A rollercoaster ride filled with varying characters and incidents from the underworld of New York's Chinatown and nearby neighborhoods, this well-written crime novel held my attention throughout. Each character came vividly to life for me. This book should appeal to fans of both Himes and pulp fiction. ( )

OK. Spoiler alert. It is pretty well written. There is a lot that I'm sure is true about Chinese organized crime in NYC & beyond. (including the buses.) The plot wasn't very well developed and it was pretty ordinary. I don't know how much hate crime there is against Chinese in the African American community but he kinda made the African American criminals more obviously subhuman than the Chinese criminals. It raises interesting issues of plot choice & style.