ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

Review: Leonard Chang's novel "Fade to Clear"

July 1, 2004

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

In the fictional world of novels, Allen Choice is a private investigator. His real-life creator, writer Leonard Chang, has just released a new book; it's called "Fade to Clear." And Alan Cheuse has this review.

ALAN CHEUSE reporting:

Allen Choice, otherwise known as "The Block," a big, brawny and tenderhearted Korean-American private eye who reads Kierkegaard for pleasure, nearly gets shot to death by a Jamaican gunman at a computer warehouse in Oakland where he's checking for stolen goods. Before that little caper ends, Choice's office has been set on fire and all his company's records destroyed.

Going for long runs in the Berkeley hills with his aptly named girlfriend Serena helps Choice to clear his head, but not enough to keep him from taking on almost immediately a physically and emotionally dangerous new case. His ex-girlfriend, Linda, hires Choice to investigate the abduction of her niece. As his dogged ingenuity as a detective gets him closer and closer to the kidnapped girl, Choice sinks deeper and deeper into physical danger and risks losing his connection to the calming Serena and the possibility, as her father describes it, of a nice Korean wedding.

Sound delicious, both in terms of plot and psychology? It is. It is. So while you needn't worry about not having read the earlier novels in this series, you will worry like crazy as Choice finds himself at the wrong end of yet another gun. And you'll also worry that you may not be able to get your hands on the early volumes in the series as quickly as you'd like, even while, like me, you're already waiting for the next one.

SIEGEL:

The book is "Fade to Clear" by Leonard Chang. Our reviewer is Alan Cheuse.