LI MEI

Li Mei is an agent with the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

She is an agent of several years and quite good standing in the MSS - more specifically in the Second Bureau, Security & Intelligence Service. With that organization responsible for operations often outside the borders of China, she has traveled to many lands and was quite accustomed to new surroundings. She had, as the first recorded adventure begins, however, been looking forward to a posting in the capital where her aunt was planning on joining her.

Agent 21059, as she was designated inside the department, was born Zhen Xiao Mei. Born in Chongqing, a province in the heartland of China, her parents moved to Shanghai to avoid a plague in their homeland. It was there a couple of years later that they were murdered in front of her when father was unable, or unwilling, to pay the Triad a small sum he owed in protection. Mei was sent back to her original home to live with her aunt.

Standing a respectful 5'6" and being physically fit and well muscled, Mei is a far better than average athlete, able to do a one-arm push-up, who enjoys pushing herself to the limit and loves being able to take care of herself. A master of more than one discipline of gung-fu (kung-fu to us Westerners) she is determined to not go easily should a similar fate as her parents show up.

Mei is very beautiful both to those of her race and to the men of the West she will encounter. She is described in the first book as "quite slim, had ample but not overly large breasts and flaring hips. Xiaomei had high, pronounced cheek bones, a small, delicate nose and full lips. Her exotic, almond-shaped eyes drew the first attention of anyone who saw her for the first time. Her hair was jet black, shiny and worn long down her back almost reaching her waist. Her skin was neither light nor dark, but was the golden hue that so many Caucasian women seek when sun tanning."

She was educated in China but had been sent to Yale to earn her Masters Degree (how she got sent there and how she afforded it is not known). This time in the States will prove invaluable when her assignments start pushing her there and she is forced to blend in.

Grading this series is very tough. I was hooked on the first book almost from the initial page and read it voraciously. I moved immediately to the second book which is always a good sign for a series. I want that understood right away.

Because now the not-so-good. I have never read a book written in the style before and I have read literally thousands of books.

It is not really a piece of prose fiction. It is hard to even put it in the same category as story-telling.

You might call it a spy-cum-police procedurial but that description would keep you in the story-telling realm and this is not.

It reads, to me, as kind of a police report but it lacks the official air of it. Still, each paragraph feels like it could almost rise up off a report if nudged just a tad.

So it is a strange cross between prose and report.

It is quite odd and oddly quite effective. I have no idea if the author intended it to be so or if that is just his way of writing but that is how I found it.

And that is how I keep finding it as I moved through each book, never once thinking I might stop.

So, the bad news is it reads quite different than one would expects and the good news is that the character is really interesting and the cases quite fascinating and who cares about the bad news.