Wild Prey is the second Inspector Lu Fei mystery/thriller by Brian Klingborg. Released 17th May 2022 by Macmillan on their Minotaur imprint, it's 304 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is a very well written, tautly plotted mystery set in Asia post-covid. The protagonist is wonderfully rendered. He's a morally uncomplicated police inspector, sent to a less desirable posting in a rural area, despite being intelligent, driven, and exceedingly honest. In fact, his utter incorruptibility is a large part of *why* he finds himself policing in a backwater town in China.
This time, a missing persons case gets him drawn into a huge undercover assignment, trying to break up an international smuggling ring dealing in the trade of wild endangered animal products on the black market. I loved the pacing and action driven plot. The writing is superb and the author manages to make the culture and customs accessible at the same time accentuating the challenges of modern conservation in a system with literally thousands of years of support and acceptance of traditional herbal medicine.
The dialogue is peppered with transliterated Chinese phrases which the author does a good job of translating in context. It added verisimilitude without being overly intrusive. There is a pleasantly surprising amount of warm humor in the writing as well, and the dialogue surprised a few chuckles out of me (in a good way).
Four and a half stars. This is top shelf fiction. Although the plot, resolution, and denouement are self contained in this volume, I heartily recommend the first book in the series as well. They would make a great weekend mini-binge read. I heartily wish and hope for further books in the series.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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