Stacey Lee memorably re-creates 1932 Los Angeles--"a city of reinvention"--in Kill Her Twice, an intriguing murder mystery loosely inspired by Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American Hollywood movie star. Lee's fictional stand-in, Lulu Wong, has only played villains on screen, but recently has "been given the opportunity to do something groundbreaking." But then sisters May and Gemma Chow discover Lulu's corpse in a horse stable. May mourns her old school friend: "Lulu had been the pride of Chinatown. And now she was its deepest sorrow."
Powerful city officials use Lulu's murder to further condemn "the brackish pond of Chinatown"--and to justify razing the community. May and Gemma, together with their Agatha Christie-devouring youngest sister, Peony--insist on finding the truth. "It was bad enough that someone had killed her," but scandal would be akin to a second death--"They would kill her twice." Despite the police's convenient arrest of a Chinatown scapegoat, the trio unearths unlikely details: satsuma mandarins, a Schnauzer, Liberté cigarettes. The whodunnit reveal becomes an addictive maze through clever red herrings and unexpected twists.
Lee specializes in historical fiction (Luck of the Titanic, The Downstairs Girl). Here she deftly interweaves Hollywood's relentless racism with the 1930s destruction of L.A.'s Old Chinatown. Lee writes confidently and authoritatively, transforming her compelling fiction into a reclamation of her American heritage as a fourth-generation Chinese American. Verifiable historic events grant Lee's stories gravitas; her impressively convincing characters make that history real. Readers will surely agree. --Terry Hong