Chop Suey: A novel about Hong Kong, China and the Chinese

A body washes up on the Hong Kong-China border - on the Hong Kong side, but it's clear the death must have occurred inside China proper. In trying to learn how the victim died, then, investigators have to solve a parallel mystery: what was he doing in China in the first place? For the man, a veteran Hong Kong resident, had vowed never to cross that border again - and had kept that vow for 35 years. As the investigation proceeds, the reader is taken on a journey through Chinese art, cuisine, culture, tradition and recent history. The novel avoids the usual cliches about China, instead helping to explain the Chinese character, and how the People's Republic suddenly exploded out of its ideological straitjacket to become a world power - and the lengths to which the Chinese Communist Party, which engineered the drastic transformation, will go in order to remain in charge.