In Flower Net, Lisa See gives us a China not often seen: An extraordinary nation that is at once admirable and frightening.
Here the veil is ripped away from modern China--its venerable culture, its teeming economy, its institutionalized cruelty--and the inextricable link between China's fortunes and America's**is underscored.
In the depths of a Beijing winter, during the waning days of Deng Xiaoping's reign, the U.S. ambassador's son is found dead--his body entombed in a frozen lake.**Almost simultaneously, American officials find a ship adrift in the storm-churned waters off Southern California.**No one is surprised to find the fetid hold crammed with hundreds of undocumented Chinese immigrants--the latest cargo in the Chinese mafia's burgeoning smuggling trade.**What does surprise Assistant U.S. Attorney David Stark is his discovery that among the hapless refugees lies the corpse of a Red Prince, a scion of China's political elite.
The Chinese and American governments suspect that the deaths are connected, and in an unprecedented move they join forces to solve this cross-cultural crime.**Stark heads for Beijing to team up with police detective Liu Hulan, whose unorthodox methods are tolerated only because of her spectacular investigative abilities.**Their investigation carries them into virtually every corner of today's China, and leads them to Los Angeles's thriving Asian community--where their search turns up a bloodthirsty murderer at the apex of China's power structure.**Their work together also ignites their passion for each other--a passion forbidden by their respective governments, and one that plays right into the hands of a serial killer.
An accomplished stage actress, Elaina Davis performed in Hamlet, and in Richard II and Troilus & Cressida for the New York Shakespeare Festival.**She was a principal character on television's As The World Turns, and has appeared in the film Contact.
