Lisa Brackmann 101

Review of latest Lisa Brackmann novel now at The Life Sentence.

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Lisa Brackmann: China series

A Dystopian China (Lisa Brackmann 101) [The review below was published on the late lamented site The Life Sentence, and since the post is no longer available on-line at the original site, I'm posting it here.] Recent news that the Chinese government has allowed the artist Ai Weiwei to exhibit his work in China for the first time in years has an echo in the most recent (and probably last) installment of one of crime fiction’s most successful portrayals of China and the Chinese art world. Lisa Brackmann’s trio of Ellie McEnroe novels are not murder mysteries, though there’s plenty of murder and mystery in them. They’re more like exotic adventure novels or dystopian fantasies rooted in the everyday life of contemporary China. Each of the novels, Rock Paper Tiger (2010), Hour of the Rat (2013), and the new Dragon Day (2015), follows a similar pattern, within an overall story arc. Ellie McEnroe is an expat American, a wounded, PTSD-suffering Iraq-war veteran (hav...
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