The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan

From the Publisher

With The Shanghai Moon, S. J. Rozan returns to her award-winning, critically acclaimed, and much-loved characters Lydia Chin and Bill Smith in the first new novel in the series in seven years. Estranged for months from fellow P.I. Bill Smith, Chinese-American private investigator Lydia Chin is brought in by colleague and former mentor Joel Pilarsky to help with a case that crosses continents, cultures, and decades.   In Shanghai, excavation has unearthed a cache of European jewelry dating back to World War II, when Shanghai was an open city providing safe haven for thousands of Jewish refugees. The jewelry, identifed as having belonged to one such refugee - Rosalie Gilder - was immediately stolen by a Chinese official who fled to New York City. Hired by a lawyer specializing in the recovery of Holocaust assets, Chin and Pilarsky are to find any and all leads to the missing jewels.However, Lydia soon learns that there is much more to the story than they've been told: The Shanghai Moon, one of the world's most sought after missing jewels, reputed to be worth millions, is believed to have been part of the same stash. Before Lydia can act on this new information, Joel Pilarsky is murdered, Lydia is fired from the case, and Bill Smith finally reappears on the scene. Now Lydia and Bill must unravel the truth about the Shanghai Moon and the events that surrounded its disappearance sixty years ago during the chaos of war and revolution, if they are to stop more killings and uncover the truth of what is going on today.

The Washington Post - Maureen Corrigan

If Lydia and Bill's dance of attraction/distraction is a staple of this series, so are Rozan's exquisitely crafted plots…The Shanghai Moon is a standout in this series in terms of narrative sweep and the lush aura of romance…there's plenty of possibility lurking in the old missing-gems plot. It just takes a master like S.J. Rozan to restore the luster of a classic.

Publishers Weekly

The hunt for a valuable brooch propels Edgar-winner Rozan's ninth Lydia Chin and Bill Smith nail-biter (after 2002's Winter and Night). In 1938, Rosalie Gilder, an 18-year-old Jewish refugee, left Nazi-annexed Austria for Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where she married the aristocratic Chen Kai-Rong. Chen had a jeweler create the Shanghai Moon, a brooch combining Rosalie's mother's diamonds with his ancestors' rare jade. Its disappearance during WWII interests treasure hunters in the present day. When Wong Pan, a corrupt Chinese official, steals Rosalie's jewelry box, recently unearthed in Shanghai, a Swiss asset-recovery specialist hires Joel Pilarsky, Lydia's friend and associate, to recover it in New York City, where Wong has fled in hopes of selling Rosalie's jewels on the black market. After Joel's murdered, Lydia and Bill follow a trail to Manhattan's Chinatown, where they encounter Rosalie's son and other relatives eager to recover the brooch. More surprises abound before Lydia and Bill can put the curse of the luminous Shanghai Moon to rest in Rozan's rich blend of historical mystery and contemporary suspense. Author tour. (Feb.)

Jo Ann Vicarel - Library Journal

After a seven-year hiatus, PIs Lydia Chin and Bill Smith are back on the mean streets of New York City. A colleague hires Lydia to find a Chinese police officer who has absconded with jewelry belonging to a Jewish refugee family who had fled to Shanghai in 1938. The man is presumed to be in New York trying to sell it. Soon other complications ensue, as another Chinese cop is found dead. Using letters and journal entries from the 1930s and 1940s, Rozan sets the stage for the modern quest for the missing valuables stolen from Jews during the Holocaust. She also gives us a brilliant look into the culture of Chinese American families today and an exciting mystery. Readers who have waited patiently for this one will not be disappointed. Highly recommended. [Library marketing; see Prepub Mystery, LJ10/1/08.]

Kirkus Reviews

"I'm back," Lydia Chin tells her mother, and so she is, following the long hiatus since Winter and Night (2002), to track down a fabled brooch that's at the root of violence past and present. Seventy years after Rosalie Gilder and her brother Paul fled Nazi Germany for Shanghai, an excavation unearthed a cache of her jewelry, which promptly vanished again. Now Joel Pilarsky's client, Holocaust asset-recovery specialist Alice Fairchild, wants to see whether any of the pieces have turned up in New York's Chinatown, and Joel naturally thinks of his friend Lydia for the job. No sooner has Lydia established a close link between the Gilder family and the Bright Hopes jewelry store than a murder turns up the heat on her investigation and reunites Lydia with her partner Bill Smith. The fate of the Shanghai Moon, a brooch celebrating Rosalie's marriage to Chen Kai-Rong, is clearly tied to three men close to Bright Hopes: proprietor Chen Lao-li, his cousin Zhang Li and Zhang's half-brother C.D. Zhang. Persisting with her inquiries even after she's fired from the case and waving off the polite assurances she's given by Chen and the Zhangs, Lydia struggles to make sense of decades-long relationships and shifting family loyalties. She reaches a turning point when she realizes that Alice's clients are bogus-and so perhaps is the Shanghai Moon. Rozan (In This Rain, 2006, etc.) plots as expansively and ambitiously as ever, though the 1938 back story is more touching-and certainly easier to follow-than the present-day mayhem. Welcome back, Lydia and Bill.

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