Children of the Dragon - Red Dragon - Theresa M. Moore, Author

“It takes an Asian to understand another Asian, you know what I mean?”  “I’m not sure.  Are you saying I can’t do this because I’m a white man?”  Well…yes,” she said.  “In order to see what’s going on you need to know something about the culture, the history of the Chinese triads.  There have been wars between rival clans that last so long that sometimes the factions have forgotten how they started.  They have a code of behavior that makes them honor certain traditions that are not revealed to occidentals.  This is not warfare the way it’s waged in the rest of the world.  This warfare is waged with backroom deals, with business mergers, with swift and quiet executions in the middle of the night to eliminate the competition.  They are devout capitalists in the purest sense of the word.  These factions boost their power by dealing in drugs, human slavery, prostitution, illegal arms sales, you name it.  They also deal in money laundering using very legitimate businesses to cover their tracks.  The more wealth they amass, the more firepower they accumulate to back their political influence, and the corruption goes all the way to the top.”…. “You must become the dragon to catch the dragon.” 

 

 

Michael Burton is a journalist who has been given his first major story.  His mission is to infiltrate the two rival clans known as the Red Dragons and the Black Dragons. To do this he has been given the full cooperation of the San Francisco Police Department with his main connection being Detective Lori Wu.  Lori and her team will teach the “white man” to talk and act as a Chinese.  But, the more Michael learns about the two clans, the more he exposes them through his articles, the more danger he and Lori find themselves stepping into. 

 

 

Michael’s investigation of the clans take him to an underground death match fight.  He finds himself appalled at the events taking place right before his eyes.  The fight must continue until one opponent dies. The fighter known as Xue Yaoli has never lost a fight and when he spots Michael in the crowd of spectators, he locks eyes with him giving Michael a feeling of death to come.  But there is more than that in Yaoli’s eyes.  There is a sense of recognition that can’t be denied.  So when Michael requests a meeting with him, he finds himself being confronted with family secrets that not only upset Michael but also confuse him regarding his heritage. 

 

 

Theresa M. Moore has slipped another one in on me that I simply couldn’t put down.  In the Red Dragon, she brings back the vampire villain Julianus as he again spreads his desire to control wreaking havoc on everyone and everything he comes in contact with.  I now find myself impatiently waiting to read her next book in the series, The Queens Marksman.