The Case of the Chinese Boxes by Marele Day

Following on from The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender, the book that introduced tough Sydney private investigator Claudia Valentine comes this second book in the series, The Case Of The Chinese Boxes. It's now 1988, the year of Australia's Bicentennial and there's a lot of celebrating going on. But the National Australia Bank aren't celebrating. They've just been knocked over in one of the biggest, most daring robberies in Australia's history and the fall-out is about to land in Claudia's lap. Like the first book it's a traditional PI story that starts out with few leads before careful digging unearths an unexpected twist and some villains not happy with the attention.

Claudia is hired by Charles Chen and his mother Victoria to recover a lost key that had been stolen from a bank safe deposit box during a recent daring bank robbery. The key is particularly ornate and apparently opens some traditional Buddhist Chinese Boxes, but more importantly, is a symbol of the family's power and standing in the community. This case will not only take Claudia out of her comfort zone and into the underworld dominated by the dangerous Chinese Triads who rule Chinatown, but it will also take her to parts of Sydney that she never knew existed and, for her own safety, perhaps wished she still didn't know.

Not only does Claudia have to contend with an unknown enemy who, at one point, thoughtfully slips a warning message inside her fortune cookie, but she finds that she is working for a client who is very unwilling to provide her with any details that might prove helpful in solving the case. Claudia has to resort to some pretty unorthodox investigative methods before she begins to achieve results.

As a consequence, for much of the story we are carried along while waiting for something to happen. Because the case is fairly vague and clues are hard to come by, Claudia - to invoke a relevant metaphor - is left to poke at the dragon in the hope that it might wake and try to bite her. The result is a case that shoots off into a completely unexpected direction dragging an unwilling private investigation along with it.

Many of the characters who were introduced in Harry Lavender returned to assist Claudia with this case too, but author Marele Day didn't think to reintroduce those characters to us. So unless you had just finished the first book or had a particularly good memory, you wouldn't know who these characters were or how they fit into Claudia's life. I had only finished Harry Lavender a month before reading this and I was still struggling to recall who some of the vaguely familiar characters were.

A delightful addition to the story is Hong Kong based visitor James Ho, a flirtatious nuisance who quickly becomes the bane of Claudia's life with his unexpected appearances and amusingly obvious suggestions. Claudia's annoyance and discomfort around Ho provides for some lighter moments in an otherwise dangerous and serious case. But Ho is also the holder of some of the more tantalising secrets in this story and proves to be an exceptional private investigator in his own right.

This is an intriguing investigation that displays Claudia Valentine's ingenuity and dogged determination. She takes us on a visit into Sydney's Chinese community, faces down a Triad member or two, makes contact with the most talked about bank robber in the country and crosses swords with a visiting P.I. All in all there's a lot to like about The Case Of The Chinese Boxes.