The Wild Beasts of Wuhan

Another adding to this stylish series. I just love with how much detail and thoughtfulness the story goes. <br />Now I'm officially a fan of Ms Ava Lee and Mr Ian Hamilton's writing. <br /><br />Still I can't help myself mentionng a bit of funny idiosyncrasy about this book: Ms Lee is an accountant. This is punctuated by a certain repetitiveness of her mundane choices, namely the stuff she wears and the drinks she drinks.<br /><br />In this installment Ms Lee is still depicted as one of the most Starbucks VIA instant coffee-loving persons under the moon:<br />1/ She made herself a cup of Starbucks VIA instant coffee and collected the South China Morning Post that was waiting for her at the door. <br />2/ She rolled out of bed, boiled water in the hotel kettle, and made her first Starbucks VIA instant coffee of the morning.<br />3/ She quickly made a Starbucks VIA instant coffee, downed it, brushed her teeth and hair, put on her running gear, and headed downstairs.<br />4/ She boiled water in the kettle at the bar and made a Starbucks VIA instant coffee.<br />5/ She made herself a Starbucks VIA coffee, downed it quickly, put on her running gear, and headed downstairs.<br /><br />And oh boy, does she love her pumps:<br />1/ When she put on a bit of makeup, let her black, silky hair hang loose or wore it swept up with one of her collection of clasps and hairpins, and slipped on a slim-fitting skirt with a pair of black leather Cole Haan heels, she turned heads — male and female.<br />2/ It was almost noon when she walked out of the Ocean Terminal with her Brooks Brothers bags and another from Cole Haan with a pair of black leather pumps.<br />3/ Ava chose the black cotton slacks and the more modest Cole Haan pumps, and offset the dark palette with her new pink Brooks Brothers shirt.<br />4/ She chose her pink Brooks Brothers shirt and the black linen slacks, completing the outfit with her black leather Cole Haan pumps.<br /><br />Aaand her Brooks Brothers which are definitely the winner here:<br />1/ “There’s a Brooks Brothers store in Tsim Sha Tsui,”<br />2/ The Brooks Brothers store was on the third floor of the Ocean Terminal.<br />3/ Ava had been dressing in Brooks Brothers for years. The crisp, tailored look fit the image she wanted to project as an accountant, as a serious professional. <br />4/ There were four Brooks Brothers stores in Hong Kong, but Ava knew from previous trips that this one was the largest and had the best selection of women’s clothing. <br />5/ It was almost noon when she walked out of the Ocean Terminal with her Brooks Brothers bags and another from Cole Haan with a pair of black leather pumps.<br />6/ Ava chose the black cotton slacks and the more modest Cole Haan pumps, and offset the dark palette with her new pink Brooks Brothers shirt.<br />7/ The other women eyed Ava, in her pink Brooks Brothers shirt and black slacks, with either suspicion or disdain.<br />8/ She stepped out of the shower and towelled herself off, then put on her blue-and-white pinstriped shirt and her cotton Brooks Brothers slacks. <br />9/ She dressed, the second Steinum sweater going over the black Brooks Brothers shirt.<br />10/ She put the black Brooks Brothers shirt and cotton slacks in the first bag, and in the other the laundry bag from Aalborg with her running gear. <br />11/ She pulled a Steinum sweater over her T-shirt and Brooks Brothers black linen pants and headed downstairs and out onto the High Street. (right after she got the VIA Starbucks down, yep :))<br />12/ She put on her black Brooks Brothers shirt and cotton slacks, fixed her hair with the ivory chignon pin, and even put on a little makeup.<br />13/ She put on the blue-and-white pinstriped Brooks Brothers shirt, her black linen slacks, and her alligator heels. <br />14/ She chose her pink Brooks Brothers shirt and the black linen slacks, completing the outfit with her black leather Cole Haan pumps. <br />15/ She packed a fresh set of clothes: a midnight-blue shirt with an Italian collar she had bought during her previous trip to London, a white Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, a clean pair of black Brooks Brothers slacks, and a light tan pencil skirt that came just above the knee.<br />Yay, definitely the winner to any ad-fest!<br /><br />:) Now this is just plain funny and goes to say how deeply the brands have permeated everywhere. :)

Book 3 in the Ava Lee series... I'm addicted! It has been a tremendously long time since I've gobbled up one book after another, and found so much enjoyment in the variety in the plots. <br /><br />This time Ava is off into the world of art fraud, and travelling to Iceland and England, as well as a province of mainland China. A kingpin in Wuhan has "lost face" buying this fake art, and Uncle features again, this time as the old village connection prevails to use his influence to seek retribution. This time round, Ava's martial arts skills are less necessary than her forensic accounting skills, and we even get to go shopping with her in Hong Kong while she updates her upscale wardrobe! <br /><br />Nothing goes smoothly, as usual, which is the delight of this series, and I keep reading on tenterhooks to discover how Ava will unravel the messes she finds herself in and outwit the bad guys, and save the day. Asian Canadian Nancy Drew for adults - heheh! <br /><br />Book four is on request... only one copy in my library, and I'm second in line so it could be a month before I'm off on another Ava Lee adventure, but for sure, I'll be glad to meet her again. <br /><br />4.5 stars.

While we're used to cozy mysteries led by such unlikely sleuths as quilters and cats, we usually expect our less-cozy mysteries to have protagonists with more qualifications for the job: cops, ex-cops, PIs, and the like. But there's a growing sub-genre featuring crime-busting accountants. <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/264110.David_Dodge" title="David Dodge" rel="noopener">David Dodge</a>, active in the 1940s, may be the father of this sub-genre. Other authors who've played in this pool include Dick Francis (<i> <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/8530.Risk" title="Risk by Dick Francis" rel="noopener">Risk</a> </i>), <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/534679.Gail_Farrelly" title="Gail Farrelly" rel="noopener">Gail Farrelly</a>, <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/170044.Marshall_Jevons" title="Marshall Jevons" rel="noopener">Marshall Jevons</a>, <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/5315300.Colleen_Cross" title="Colleen Cross" rel="noopener">Colleen Cross</a> and <a href="https://goodreads.com/author/show/4958072.Ashley_Fontainne" title="Ashley Fontainne" rel="noopener">Ashley Fontainne</a>. More to the point, there's also Ian Hamilton, whose series heroine Ava Lee makes her third appearance in <i>The Wild Beasts of Wuhan</i>.<br /><br />Ava's a Hong Kong-born, Toronto-raised forensic accountant who specializes in finding and recovering money lost to fraud by people who have reasons not to engage the police. She works for Uncle -- who may be connected to the Triads -- and takes a cut of what she extracts from the scammers. In this episode, she's called on to figure out who sold megawealthy Wuhan kingmaker Wong Changxing over $70 million in forged Fauvist paintings (the titular "wild beasts," as the Fauvists were known to 19th-Century art critics). Her hunt takes her most of the way around the world as she pieces together the plot. (If your around-the-world mystery-reading challenge includes the Faroe Islands, this book's for you.)<br /><br />Ava's acceptable if not overly engaging company. She's smart and capable, pretty much always comes out on top, is an experienced globetrotter, and is (of course) beautiful enough for nearly all the men she runs across to come on to her. Not that it does them much good: she likes girls, a fact that makes no essential difference in her character other than the gender of the person she chooses for the obligatory one-nighter partway through her travels.<br /><br />This is a straightforward follow-the-money story that Ava solves in a fairly straightforward way. If you like lots of twists and turns in your mystery plots, you won't really find them here. The art-forgery angle is interesting and you'll learn a few things about the art market. However, the criminal machinations aren't all that opaque, and Ava unearths them through doggedness rather than brilliant leaps of deduction, risky B&amp;E, or applications of physical force. Just as in TV cop shows, the perps mostly fess up with minimal hesitation. A lot of her progress comes courtesy of Uncle's <i>guanxi</i>, or clout. No matter where she goes, Ava's able to get doors opened and cooperation extracted through a phone call to Uncle, who apparently has nearly limitless reach as well as the ability to work as fast as Ava's nonstop travel schedule. In retrospect, it all seems awfully easy. Ava spends more time in transit or in the shower (say what you will about her, she's impressively clean) than she does detecting.<br /><br />The back-cover copy promises something like a thriller -- Ava is "alluring but deadly," there are "dangerous criminals," and "this is one scam that could get her killed," -- but you won't get anything like that. The greatest physical threat Ava faces is from a group of drunken Russian fishermen, easily disposed of. Even the touted "massive web of corruption" is oversold. Save for some adult language and the lack of recipes, this could be a cozy.<br /><br /><i>The Wild Beasts of Wuhan</i> isn't a bad read if you ignore the back cover and go into the novel with the proper expectations. It's a mild-mannered mystery in which the deadliest weapons are cell phones and laptops and the greatest existential threats to Our Heroine are jet lag and airline food. You get to watch Ava put the pieces together, and if you pay attention, maybe you can solve the puzzle before she does. If that appeals to you, there are six installments in this series. I may read another of these sometime...perhaps in an airplane, where Ava spends most of her time.

I happen to like this series about Ava Lee, a Canadian forensic accountant of Chinese descent. Her business partner (Uncle) and she visit with a successful businessman in Wuhan to find out that he and his primary wife (#2) have been duped into buying $75 million of forged Fauvist paintings. Ava is afraid of retribution but is cajoled by May (wife #2) to help. Following a thin trail that winds through Hong Kong, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, London, and NY, Ava is a world class sleuth and is forced to educate herself about the art world. The secondary characters in Hamilton's work are usually colorful and entertaining, but Ava's family and love life are tiring and repetitive.

This is the third book in this series that I have read and I've really enjoyed all of them. The main character, Ava Lee, is a forensic accountant, which means she gets people money back that has been stolen, embezzled etc. In this book, the client is a Chinese billionaire who has spent $100 million dollars on an art collection, only to find out that most of the paintings are fake. It's Ava's job to recover as much of that money as she can.<br /><br />I realize that this probably doesn't sound too exciting, but there is more to Ava than meets the eye. As well as being beautiful and intelligent, she is also a master of several martial arts. At one point in the book, she has a disagreement with three drunk Russian seamen. You can use your imagination.<br /><br />The only problem I have with the book is that at times the author conveys too much detail. What she is wearing, what she is eating, what flight she is taking (and she takes quite a few flights). And the book is pretty much an advertisement for Starbucks Via instant coffee. It must be mentioned by name that she is drinking one at least eight times. But other than these couple of quibbles, a very enjoyable book. I am a big fan of art, and like reading about art forgeries etc. so that made the book even more enjoyable for me.<br /><br />Oh, and the book ends with a small cliffhanger, no doubt so that will encourage you to get the next book in the series. But I'm already going to do that, so that's ok.

Maybe it’s just me, but when I pick up a novel featuring a Chinese-Canadian lesbian protagonist written by a straight white man my guard is immediately up. So I admittedly came into The Wild Beasts of Wuhan with quite the critical eye.<br />It’s not that I didn’t like the ass-kicking and sleuthing part of this novel for what it was, but the queer and feminist problems I had (including how it deals with sexual assault, lesbian gender, capitalism, and trans women) overshadowed any enjoyment I felt. It wouldn’t be hard to combine the parts of this novel that work with some more thoughtful queer and feminist politics; in fact, I know there are other novels that do this. Why can’t this one?<br /><br />See my full review here:<br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/an-ass-kicking-sleuthing-heroine-who-needs-a-queer-feminist-makeover-a-review-of-ian-hamiltons-the-wild-beasts-of-wuhan/">http://caseythecanadianlesbrarian.wor...</a>

The Wild Beasts of Wuhan was quite a fascinating foray into the world of art forgeries, Fauvism in particular! (I had to Google that.)<br />However, I’m now pretty tired of all the product placement!! I don’t care that Ava Lee likes to start her day with an upmarket brand of instant coffee(?!) or that she has expensive tastes in high end tailored shirts and suits. Nor do I care that her bag and cufflinks have matching logos (I presume they do!) or that she ends up buying swanky sweaters from the Faroe Islands for her bff, Mimi, and current girlfriend, Maria.<br />I feel the endless insertion of what Ava buys and wears detracts from the plot. <br />I’m so heartily fatigued and put off by this aspect that I’m not sure I can handle another. And that would be a shame as Ava Lee is a cracking good character!

Urgh. I hope this is a blip, but this installment of Ava Lee was very much one long sponsored instagram post by a brand ambassador. It repeated itself over and over. It also had an unfortunate dose of "woman who is written by a man". I promise, gentlemen, that 9 times out of 10, we don't sit around in our hotel rooms in our "panties" (a horrid word), particularly if we have trackies in our suitcase. <br /><br />Where the first one had these tendencies, by this third book these problem parts had ramped up and started to take over the fun. And that's sad, as I really liked the fun.<br /><br />I think I have the next two in the series so will keep going for those, but the series is going to have to pivot pretty damn quickly on it's Cole Haan pumps or black alligator high heels, whether you expensed them or not.

I am a sucker for this series. I don’t know why it is, but I admit a fascination with the heroine, Ava Lee. I love knowing where she is staying in the capitols of Europe and Asia, what she eats, where she exercises. She is more disciplined than I am, which I admire, and it is interesting to see what someone driven can accomplish in a day with unlimited funds and a sense of vengeance. <br /><br />Author Hamilton never seems to lose sight of where Ava is in the day. Ava catches planes like other people catch taxis, and almost every day is a new country, a new time zone, a new set of circumstances. But neither the author nor our heroine ever gets confused about what time it is in Hong Kong where her partner, the revered “Uncle”, resides.<br /><br />In this third in the series, Ava chases down art forgers in Ireland and the Faroe Islands for her clients in Wuhan, China. Then, in London and New York, she finds the dealers to whom the forgers sold their paintings. But this time she blunders a little. She goes into the case with less information than she needs to force a settlement, and has to backtrack, get more information, and then re-engage. This is more like us ordinary mortals, who occasionally hit stumbling blocks. I didn’t like to see her fail, but it is nice to know she is not completely invulnerable.<br /><br />Another twist in the story is that Ava’s clients do the unforgiveable: they become involved with her resolution of the case. She exacts her revenge for that, too, which keeps us wondering to the end. All in all, Hamilton adds complexities to his protagonist’s cases that he must unravel throughout the story. Seeing how Ava will decide to manage the issues she faces is what makes this series delectable. <br /><br />During the course of this investigation, Ava has a casual one night stand with a hotel manageress. I wondered about that—whether or not it rang true. As I read on, I shrugged it off. It could be possible. She seems entirely her own woman. I wouldn’t dare say what she would or wouldn‘t do. I have a feeling she and Hamilton are going to continually surprise me throughout this series.<br />

Book 3 of the Ava Lee series and I still really like her. She is still kick-ass. This time she is tracking art forgers. I'm not big on art so it's interesting to learn about how art are sold and how forgeries could be made.<br />We also see more of her relationship with her family and with Uncle. <br />Some parts are getting repetitive, such as the emphasis on what brand of clothes and shoes Ava wears. Maybe because Asians are more brand-conscious? (I'm Asian-Canadian and have noticed my relatives in Asia are quite brand-conscious.) Or, is it to show Ava's need for order and consistency? She is an accountant, after all.