The setting - New York City's Chinatown - takes on an organic, life-sized existence, and it almost supersedes all other fictional components it would have, had Chang not been so talented at character development.
The plotlines followed by Chang are dark, and his characters are mired in a labyrinth of local customs and societal distrust.
It is a novel of setting, though also of noirish foreboding. More than a driving novel of suspense or intrigue, Chinatown is a look at a segment of society closed to most people, who do not share its ethnic heritage. There is perhaps no finer example of this technique than in Henry Chang's Chinatown Beat.
Some of the best crime novels are sociological explorations of place and time, in which law-breaking and mystery-solving elements are infused into a framework of cultural mores.
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