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Asian crime scene

by Mark Schreiber

Asia 2000, a small publisher in Hong Kong, offers a “Black Butterfly” crime/mystery series by local writers. In a work with Graham Greene overtones, “Cheung Chau Dog Fanciers’ Society,” by Alan B. Pierce, tells the tale of small-time financial consultant suspected of laundering drug money, who is kept in legal limbo on one of Hong Kong’s outer islands. Pierce, who worked 13 years in the Hong Kong Attorney General’s Office, knows his subject matter well.

“The Temutma,” a horror novel by Rebecca Bradley and Stewart Sloan, takes the reader into the Walled City of Kowloon, site of a former Qing dynasty fort that, due to a jurisdictional discrepancy, became a notorious slum beyond the reach of British control until it was finally torn down about a decade ago. In a Gothic tale with a Far Eastern spin, Temutma, an ageless demon, awakens from slumber to break his fast with human flesh.