Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
This fictionalised tale of two families [initially] caught up in the Los Angeles riots of the early 1990s and fast-forwarded to our contemporary times, is a vivid and urgent narrative. Beautifully written, the story becomes an incendiary device for the mind.
Cha’s unusual narrative backdrops American divisions, both the racial and social striation that is the USA; sadly, that divide is apparent globally where class and race become the markers we carry on our skin, and on our clothes.
The story reflects upon a Korean-American, as well as an African-American family, intertwined and both confronting a dilemma, and a redemptive justice of sorts.
Opening in 1991, the tinderbox LA pre-riot atmosphere is palpable. A black teenager Ava Matthews is shot by a Korean-American local-convenience shop-keeper, in a tragic set of circumstances. Jung-Ja Han, is Ava’s killer, and serves no prison time, despite the manslaughter ruling, much to the anger of the Matthews’ family, especially the younger son Shawn.
The book fast-forwards to 2019.
Jung-Ja Han has changed her name to Yvonne Park, and she runs a family Korean-American mall-store with husband Paul. They have two daughters, the estranged Miriam and pharmacist Grace, who helps with the family business.
Shawn Matthews has moved on, but still haunted by his older sister’s murder in the 1990s store shooting, that also caught his aunt Sheila in the crossfire.
Yvonne Park, is shot and her former identity Jung-Ja Han revealed, causing an outcry, and a ratcheting up over racial tensions, and community cohesion.
Told from the alternating eyes of Korean-American Pharmacist Grace Park, and that of the African-American Shawn Matthews, we get insight and dark thrills in an exciting crime thriller, that is no polemic; rather a gripping short-novel that makes the reader ‘think’ while the pages fly by.
On the microcosm it is tale of two families, but on the macrocosm, it is a story about the divisions in society, how they can arise, and how they can be addressed. A short read, but one that will stay in the memory longer than most crime thrillers.
Hugely recommended.
