E N T E R T A I N M E N T

Sun, Feb 11, 2001
Man finds trips down memory lane filled with danger

By John D. Gates
JOURNAL EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

OVER THE SHOULDER. By Leonard Chang. Harper Collins. 388 pgs. $26.

This is a novel of intrigue by an author who appears to have read Marcel Proust. Allen Choice, the protagonist, is a Korean American who works for a security company and wonders frequently what life is all about and whether it's worth engaging.

On a job guarding an Asian technological entrepreneur, Choice watches as his partner is gunned down by a mystery man on a motorcycle. In trying to figure out what happened and why, Choice winds up in an exploration of his past, aided by a reporter with whom he eventually falls in love.

What Choice knows about his past is that his mother died in childbirth, his father died in a work-related incident, and he was raised by an aunt with whom he constantly fought and who threw him out of the house when he dropped out of school.

Not surprisingly, there is more to it than that. Roger Milian is the thread that binds the story together. Milian is in the export-import business and was Choice's father's boss. He has a son named Durante. When Choice discovers that a man he saw just before his partner was murdered works for the export-import company, he and his reporter friend, Linda Maldanado, start looking into the company, which leads them into the past.

The story is enriched by Choice's trips down memory lane, remembering bits and snatches of his father, his aunt and his growing up. Between them, Choice and Maldanado track down the people still living who were part of the story of Choice's youth. What happened back then becomes prologue for what's going on now.

Choice receives an unsubtle warning to back off, but ignores it, driven less by the desire to unmask his partner's killer and the motive than by his longing to discover the circumstances surrounding his father's death.

The story is set in and around San Francisco, and Chang handles his material with a sense of pace that keeps the reader fully engaged even when Choice is wandering among his memories. This is a different sort of crime novel, with some legitimate pretentions to literature.

It's an unusual and unusually good novel, but it's also, in all likelihood, another example of just how impossible writing best sellers is. Doesn't seem to keep millions from trying, however.

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