Yes, it's almost two inches thick and more than 400 pages, but Chan Ho-Kei's second thriller available in the U.S., Second Sister, is virtually irresistible, with twisty-turny manipulations guaranteed to keep readers wide awake into the wee hours.
Nga-Yee and Siu-Man are sisters who have only each other left in the world: their father died in a construction work-related accident when Nga-Yee was almost 13 and Siu-Man was four; their mother succumbed to cancer a decade later, leaving Nga-Yee to raise Siu-Man on her own. Returning from her librarian job one evening, Nga-Yee is horrified to learn that the bloody corpse on the pavement outside her apartment building is Siu-Man, who apparently jumped from their 22nd-floor window. The quiet Siu-Man had been ferociously cyberbullied after outing a subway groper, but Nga-Yee thought she was doing everything possible to care for her sensitive sister. Devastated and bewildered, Nga-Yee can't accept that Siu-Man chose death.
When the police prove unhelpful, Nga-Yee approaches an acerbic, arrogant detective who calls himself just N. He initially refuses to take the case, but her tenacity eventually breaks through his protestations.
Chan presents what initially seems to be a linear mystery and amplifies the thriller into a multi-layered treatise on overcrowded cities and its overlooked citizens (his native Hong Kong earns character status here), the unchecked power of the Internet, the grey ethics of revenge, and the potential limits of morality in business, friendships and even among family members. For readers, the provocative mix of urgent contemporary issues and page-turning action won't disappoint. --Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon