Murder noir, by the Tiger Mother

Amy Chua burst into popular public consciousness with her third book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. An memoir about her strict Chinese-parenting approach, the book was both wildly entertaining and wildly controversial. Her next book also created controversy: an ‘explanation’ of why East Asian and Jewish communities are successful in America (coincidentally, Chua and her husband are East Asian and Jewish respectively). Now she has written her first novel. What is her fiction like?

Chua has clearly done lots of research for this detective-noir novel. Set in the Bay Area in the 1940s, it has a multi-page citation section at the end listing a vast array of books: original works of poetry, books about sea otters and redwood forests in 1940, modern war-history retrospectives, and biographies. Much of this appears in her novel at various points.

Unfortunately, the author doesn’t seem to believe in the concept of letting the background emerge through the eyes of the characters, and in fact seems impatient with the very idea. A chapter starting

There’s nothing better than driving over the Bay Bridge early on a Sunday morning

goes on into pages and pages about the history of the Bay Area, starting from Cortez, describing the Spanish missions, the fur trade, sea otters, Mexican immigration and the origin of San Francisco’s Nob Hill. This exposition is abruptly explained by the protagonist via:

I majored in history at Cal, but I’ve been a history buff since I was a kid

and even more abruptly, after the pages of history the reader is returned to the present time and the murder mystery plot with

“You make history so interesting, Al”, said Miriam.

The next history lesson starts with a brisk ‘According to a geology book I read’. It’s a far cry from Lawrence Block’s New York novels where the history is part of every street on which the characters walk, but is never a lecture.

The plot of The Golden Gate is even more expository. Chapter 1 describes the (accidental?) death of a young girl in 1930, where the relationship between two sisters is told, not shown, from an unconvincing child’s point of view.

Iris with her jet-black curls and Issy with her blond ones did everything together.

The murder is revealed via intermittent chapters written in the voice of an elderly woman who remembers every detail from fifteen years ago, down to dialogue. Here’s a sampling from Mrs. Bainbridge’s written deposition, describing an incident when her granddaughter was sixteen.

“Then I’ll bring her to San Francisco,” said Cassie.

“You can’t raise a deer in the city”, said John. “It’s illegal.”

Suddenly a voice from behind us said, “What a sweetie! Give her to me, I’ll take care of her.”

Mrs Bainbridge also offers up every possible deeply personal snippet from her own, her children’s and grandchildren’s lives in the deposition, to a degree where it seems like the author’s shortcut to providing this information to the reader.

Chua is Chinese-American, and there is a pleasing diversity to the characters. The detective, Al Sullivan, is part Mexican, part Jewish, but can pass as white so has changed his name to avoid discrimination. His niece, Miriam, is mixed-race, and does not have that option. Sullivan’s background is covered rather repetitively, but sometimes with a thoughtful depth.

When I was little — maybe five or six — my dad once asked me “If there’s another war between the US and Mexico, which side are you going to fight for?” I just stared at him dumbly — I didn’t know what the right answer was. Then he tousled my hair and said “Don’t you worry, gringo — you’ll fight for America. But watch out. Because the true question is, which side is going to shoot you?”

Al Sullivan can use his fluent Spanish to get information from Mexican-American witnesses, but his guilt at getting them into trouble is nicely done.

Madame Chiang Kai-Shek has a bit part, and she really did rent a house in Berkeley in the 1940s. There are several Japanese-American characters, and since this is set in WWII, the author can describe the incarceration of Japanese-Americans. There is plenty of casual racism from the white populace:

“A Communist with a Russian accent –obviously a Jew”, said Greening with distaste. “Tell me how a single race can both control the banks and be behind all the Reds? […]”

One large plot hole is the eyewitness account of a hotel maid, Juanita. She immediately recognizes a blond woman in the corridor as one of the famous Bainbridge girls, since she has seen them at the hotel since they were small. The three girls are not triplets, and not similar, according to the book. But Juanita cannot apparently tell which of the three girls she saw, since “They all look the same to me”, despite having seen them for so many years. Lazy plot device.

The novel is meant to be a sort of Gothic noir, with hauntings, dead girls, dreams, a madwoman in the attic etc., plus a hard-boiled detective, but it never quite gets the tone right. The detective is more angry than cynical, and his dreams of the dead girl don’t send a shiver up one’s spine.

As a shotgun summary of multicultural Bay Area history, it can be interesting, but as a novel, it lands with a dull thud. Read Vikram Seth’s charming novel (entirely in sonnet form)of the same name instead.