My Washington Times Review Of Tong Wars: The Untold Story Of Vice, Money And Murder In New York's Chinatown

My review of Scott D. Seligman's Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York's Chinatown appeared in the Washington Times.

Historian Scott D. Seligman offers an interesting and true tale about the Chinese gang wars in New York City from the 1890s through the 1930s. The 30-year-long gang wars resulted in many brutal murders, injustice, tragedy and rampant crime and corruption. The tong wars also made lurid headlines in the newspapers of the day. How the tong wars began, how they were waged, and how they finally ended is what Mr. Seligman’s book is all about.

“This is the story of four bloody wars and countless skirmishes fought intermittently over more than three decades inNew York’s Chinatown and the Chinese quarters of several other cities in America’s East and Midwest, with their attendant casualties, peace parleys, and treaties,” Mr. Seligman writes.

Mr. Seligman states that this is also the story of a veritable army of precinct captains, detectives, and uniformed officers bound and determined to stop the tong wars.

“Or at least to line their pockets,” he adds.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/9/book-review-tong-wars-the-untold-story-of-vice-mon/

Crime And Scotland: Scotland's Master Of Crime Is Also Its Camus

As a crime aficionado and having lived in Scotland in 1974 and 1975 while stationed on a Navy tugboat at the U.S. nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland, I'm interested in what is called "Tartan noir.'

So I was interested in Allan Massie's piece on the author of Laidlaw that appeared in the British newspaper the Telegraph.

Crime and Scotland go together, fictionally at least. Set aside Alexander McCall Smith and J K Rowling, and the most-read Scottish novelists today are crime-writers. “Tartan noir” is the name of the game; Ian Rankin and Denise Mina are two of those who most successfully show us criminal activity permeating Scottish society. Most crime writers are prolific, a novel a year, or every 18 months, being normal. There is one notable exception, the man who is widely regarded as “the father of tartan noir”. This is William McIlvanney, and he has written only three crime novels, Laidlaw in 1978, followed by The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties.

If three novels seem a narrow base for such a reputation, we might remember that Raymond Chandler wrote only half a dozen. Now Canongate is bringing out new editions – first Laidlaw, and then the others in the autumn – while Ian Rankin, who has said that without McIlvanney he might not have turned to crime, will be interviewing him at the Harrogate Crime Fiction festival on July 20. It should be an interesting session.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10080000/Scotlands-master-of-crime-is-also-its-Camus.html