9Tail Fox

A mixture of noir, Russian mafia shenanigans, mysticism, and a bit of mad science, what this book mostly has going for it is atmosphere. This is besides being a character study of the seedy cop who is the protagonist, how he is given a cosmic chance to find out why he was murdered, and for lack of a better word gains some enlightenment. Apart from that the plot sort of falls apart in the end, and if the other aspects of the book didn't hold up I could easily mark this novel down to two stars.

So wow, that was really good for a book picked solely on the colour if it's cover. ("What should I read next?" "I don't know, something red.") Supernatural noir set in an alternate San Francisco. Everything has a seedy underbelly. We'll call this 4.5 stars though, because the immersion broke every time a British word choice was thrown into this American setting.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/589074.html

I very much enjoyed Grimwood's Ashraf Bey trilogy, though was a little less convinced by either his earlier redRobe or his more recent Stamping Butterflies. I'm glad to report (IMHO) a return to form. Like the Ashraf Bey trilogy this is essentially a police procedural in a somewhat alternative history version of a famous port city with distint sfnal overtones to do with technological brain enhancements. (So we have identified what he does well, then.)

This time the city is San Francisco, however, and the central character is killed on page 30 - only to wake up, like Corwin in Nine Princes in Amber, in a hospital in upstate New York; and he spends the rest of the book solving his own murder. The basic show more plot has of course been done before, but I love Grimwood's intense and often sultry writing style; and here he successfully transfers it to a new setting, with memorable characters.

I still had a very slight feeling, after we found the solution to the mystery, that it might not hang together all that well if I inspected it too closely, but the ride was such good fun that I won't look.

A final point - I can't help noting that this is the second book by JCG featuring a scene with teenagers meeting for the first time in business class on a long-distance flight and spending the journey making out. There is presumably a true story there, waiting to be retold. show less

Another science fiction book that reads more like fantasy, with a mystery spine. There were a couple of things I didn't like--the copyediting in Chapter One almost made me put the book down, with all the plurals with apostrophes, and Bobby gets way too much gratuitous tail--but the plot itself kept my interest.

On the other hand, any book with a crackhead kitten gets bonus points for weirdness. I'd actually rate it 3 1/2 if I could.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood mixes genres blending a Hammett-style noir with Chinese mysticism and historical elements. With his intricate plots and engaging characters, after reading two of his books he is fast becoming one of my favourite writers.

The fox was pure white and carried its tail high and curled like flame over its back. Its eyes were red as coals, fierce with anger. White canines showed on either side of its mouth.
'Jinwei hu,' said Bobby.
The fox nodded, even though Bobby had only said the name in his head. Somewhere on Grant Avenue a kid let off a string of firecrackers left over from the night before and the fox grinned.

Although both books have a police detective as a main character, "9tail Fox" is completely different from the only other book of this author's that I've read. "Lucifer's Dragon" is cyberpunk, while "9tail Fox" is more of a noir detective story and is set closer to the present day. That's a good thing, as I hate finding a new author only to discover show more that s/he writes the same book over and over again.

Bobby Zha is a policeman of Chinese descent who works for the SFPD in Chinatown. His career has stalled and his marriage is in tatters, but he has an affinity for children and street people, and his boss Lieutenant Que mostly leaves him to his own devices. After being shot while on duty he sees a nine-tailed white celestial fox as he is dying, and then wakes up in the body of a man who has been in a coma since he was a seven years old. Conveniently, Robert Vanberg had received a multi-million dollar settlement for his injuries, which means that Bobby has the resources to investigate the cases he was working on at the time of his murder, in an attempt to find out why he died and why he didn't. show less

What a fun book 9tail Fox is! The premise is that world-weary San Francisco police sergeant Bobby Zha finds himself murdered, possibly by his own partner. As he lays dying on a warehouse floor, an old Chinese ghost, the nine tail fox, visits him. Next thing he knows he’s waking up in New York City. Still world-weary, he now has a purpose: find out who killed him and why. The premise isn’t new, but Grimwood makes it pretty interesting. 9tail Fox contains a great combination of eastern mysticism, San Francisco noir, and post-Soviet spy intrigue.

(Full review at my blog)