Author: Tim Maleeny
Publisher: Midnight Ink
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: March 2007
Once, in a conversation about the movies of John Woo, I told someone that the trick was to not count the bullets. I think that the same advice applies to Tim Maleeny’s novel, Stealing the Dragon.
Cape Weathers is a PI in San Francisco who is assisting the police and the FBI in investigating a cargo ship that crashed with a dead crew and full of refugees from China. The investigation will take him deep into the heart of Chinatown and the various groups that control it. The method with which the crew was killed points to Capes missing partner Sally who was trained by a secret society in China to be an assassin.
The stories of the investigation and of Sally’s training are concurrently told. The effect of hopping back and forth between stories propels the story along at a fast pace. The plot moves so fast that the effect is dizzying at times, but ultimately this is a good thing and the story is enhanced by the cross cutting of scenes. Sally’s story is a compelling one and Stealing the Dragon is a page turner in the best sense of that phrase. Then when you think that the plot can’t get any more manically paced and no more action can be packed in the two parallel story lines converge and with the battle lines drawn all of the characters will meet in a final showdown. I think that it is important to note that Stealing the Dragon is compelling because of the action packed plot not so much because of the characters, which can be a little on the thin side.
Cape Weathers and his friends on the force are characters that, for the most part, we’ve seen before but just because your favorite uncle visits once a week doesn’t mean you get bored hanging out with him because he is your favorite for a reason. So there aren’t any real surprises with any of the characters. Sally is the most developed of the characters but even she barely transcends her action movie caricature. That phrase though shouldn’t scare anyone away though because taken on her own terms she is a great character.
Cape Weathers and Sally are an odd paring to say the least. When asked why she trusts him she simply says “He’s honest.” At the point in the story when she says this we know that honesty is important to her so its enough. To Maleeny’s credit he doesn’t go into why these two people are now partners and how they first came to meet. On one hand it could be interesting to see how this question plays itself out in future books but on the other hand the paring is so odd that he may need to be careful if he does choose to reveal the genesis of their relationship. It may be one of those things that is best hinted at and left mostly unexplained.
There are some problems with the story and some smaller plot points that will jump out at most readers. But they are minor in comparison to the fast and furious story that will unfold in your minds eye. There are things left unexplained, thinks that make me scratch my head and even things that just plain don’t work. Almost none of this matters though because this book is a blast to read.
Stealing the Dragon is the first book in a series featuring Cape Weathers and Sally so the underlying question when reading a new series is ‘Will you read the other books when they come out’? Yes, I think I will.
So remember, don’t count the bullets.
