"Rozan again proves that the private detective novel thrives in the 21st century." -- Oline Cogdill, The Sun-Sentinel on On the LineAmerican-Born Chinese PI Lydia Chin is called in on what appears to be a simple case.  Jeff Dunbar, art world insider, wants her to track down a rumor.  Contemporary Chinese painting is sizzling hot on the art scene and no one is hotter than Chau Chun, known as the Ghost Hero.  A talented and celebrated ink painter, Chau's highly-prized work mixes classical forms and modern political commentary.  The rumor of new paintings by Chau is shaking up the art world.  There’s only one problem – Ghost Hero Chau has been dead for twenty years, killed in the 1989 Tianamen Square uprising.

But not only is Ghost Hero Chau long dead, but Lydia’s client isn't who he claims to be either. And she’s not the only PI hired to look for these paintings.  Lydia and her partner, Bill Smith, soon learn that someone else – Jack Lee: PI, art expert, and, like Lydia, American Born Chinese – is also on the case.  What starts as rumors over new paintings by a dead artist quickly becomes something far more desperate – a high-stakes crisis the PI's will find themselves risking everything to resolve.

< S.J. ROZAN is author of many critically acclaimed novels which have won most of crime fiction's greatest honors, including the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Macavity, and Nero awards.  Born and raised in the Bronx, Rozan now lives in lower Manhattan.  < "S.J. Rozan is a good old-fashioned mystery writer, and I mean that as a high compliment."--Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post "...excellent ... Engaging characters, crisp dialogue, intelligent storytelling, and a minimum of violence add up to another winner for Rozan."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "Rozan picks up the pace and adds a new plot twist to pull off another coup."--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times "Rozan delivers another thoroughly entertaining, meticulously plotted and utterly riveting installment of her Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series.... rival PI Jack Lee is a delightful addition."--RT Book Reviews (Top Pick!) "...more cons and double-crosses than The Sting."--Kirkus Reviews< 1  In a relentlessly chic and tranquil tea shop on the Lower East Side, I sat sipping gunpowder green and trying to figure out what my new client was up to. That the client, Jeff Dunbar, sat across the table laying out the case he was hiring me for, helped not at all.“It’s about art,” he’d begun, stirring sugar into his straight-ahead American coffee after the pleased-to-meet-yous were over.“Art?” I’d tried to sound intrigued, as opposed to baffled, by this revelation. Dunbar had called the day before, saying he needed an investigator and had seen my Web site. I’d expected, when we met on this chilly, bright spring morning, to hear a problem that was personal—cheating fiancée, two-timing wife—or professional—industrial espionage, embezzling employees. Straying spouses and shady secretaries are my daily bread and the Web site says so. It doesn’t mention art, a specialty outside any of my areas of expertise. If this case was about art, I had to wonder, why call me?Dunbar sent a dollop of milk to join the sugar. “I’m a collector. Contemporary Chinese art. Do you know much about that?”Oh. This had to do with my contemporary Chineseness? “Not much, no.”He nodded and settled back. “It’s a cutting-edge collecting area. Not really inside the PRC, even among the new rich, but in the West. Chinese painters, especially, but also sculptors, photographers, installation artists—they’re all hot.” His voice was pleasant, measured, as though lecturing at a symposium on the globalized cultural marketplace. He looked the part, too: thirtyish, short dark hair, polished shoes, the only business suit in sight. That his art and his prospective detective were both Chinese couldn’t be coincidence, but the detective’s ignorance seemed okay with him. My antennae went up. There’s a class of Westerners who “like rice”: They’re attracted to Asians, or, really, to their own exotic fantasies. If Jeff Dunbar had chosen Chinese art, and me, for that reason, he was about to get a fast good-bye. And stuck with the check.But he didn’t look it, and he wasn’t acting it. Those guys invariably wear something Asian, at least a tie with a double-happiness patter Read Less