The Two Chinatowns

Detective Cisco Sanchez #1

by Dan Mahoney

Grief-stricken and bitter when gang members kill his girlfriend, Cisco Sanchez, a volatile NYPD detective, journeys deep into the dark underbelly of Chinatown in New York and Toronto to find the killers.

Genres: Fiction

342 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

I was born in Manhattan on September 21, 1947, five minutes after Stephen King was born someplace in Maine. (I don't know what that means, but I'm hoping it means something.) I grew up in Manhattan and Queens and soon found myself to be the eldest of five children. I graduated from high school at age 16, a bad thing because I was too young to get a driver's license in New York and too stupid to realize that I had to go to college to get my ticket punched. Instead, I worked as a machinist and auto mechanic for a year before enlisting in the Marine Corps at age 17. A while later I found myself in Vietnam as a machine gunner with the 9th Marines, an outfit known as The Walking Dead. It was a very bad job, to say the least.

After getting discharged in one piece in 1968, I did as my father and grandfather had done before me and joined the NYPD. During the next twenty years I managed to get promoted regularly and served in various patrol and detective commands, mostly good jobs in mostly rotten places. I also took advantage of the VA Bill and finally went to college, attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice part time and graduating in 1977 as the class valedictorian with a BA in Romance Languages.

Also part time, I got a job as Yoko Ono's security chief after John Lennon was murdered. It turned out to be interesting work since, at the time, crazies were coming out of the woodwork to annoy and harass her. Yoko liked to travel and so did I, so one of the great benefits of the job was that I got to go to some very nice places in a very nice way.

Meanwhile, my brothers and sisters were also busy. My brother Eddie decided to call himself Eddie Money and he's been singing, doing shows, and selling records ever since. My sister Peggy became a psychologist and my two other sisters, Pat and Kathy, are both nurses.

By 1989 I had twenty years with the NYPD and it was time to retire since the chiefs had never been too happy about my high-profile, off-duty job, and I had learned by tough experience that unhappy chiefs make for miserable captains. My wife at the time had also had enough of me since, between police work, school, and working for Yoko, I hadn't been home much during our marriage, so she gave me my walking papers and a heavy-duty alimony and child-support bill.

After retiring, I began working as the director of investigations for the Holmes Detective Bureau, an old and well-regarded New York PI agency. I also got a literary agent and began working on my first book, Detective First Grade. My agent sold it to St. Martin's Press a week after I finished it and it was published in May, `93. The book got good reviews and sold well, so I had myself another good part-time career. I wrote another seven books in the next twelve years, a rate of one book every year and a half. All of them feature Detective Brian McKenna or Detective Cisco Sanchez as my protagonist, and although not New York Times best-sellers, they have all received good reviews and I have sold well enough that I now regularly make the USA Today Best Seller List. Detective First Grade, Edge of the City, Hyde, Once In, Never Out, Black and White, and The Two Chinatowns, and The Protectors are all still in print.

I now have a government job working for the Department of Homeland Security, but that will have to end soon because I must get to work on my next book. My hobbies are skiing, traveling, and hanging out with my pals in pubs in town where we spend most of our time lying about our old cases. Our motto is: "The older we get, the better we were."

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 2 out of 5]

When an NYPD's Chinese fiancee is killed, he takes to the vengeance trail in New York and in Toronto.

I just never connected with it.

[Jim Bostjancic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another real life action NYPD guy turned author was what caught my attention. Purchased the hard cover edition at a book sale for a sweet deal and had in in storage until recently reading it and was surprised how expansive it was. New York City and Toronto both have very vibrant Chinatown's but the interdiction between competing police agencies from the Far East and the British element of that stood out. Some of the surveillance techniques employed bringing down the targeted Triad in question was unique and also stood out.

[J-Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of build up for not much payoff. Some of it was really good but the final show down was incredibly underwhelming and not worth the effort. Save your time.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

#6 in the Brian McKenna / Cisco Sanchez series.

NYPD detective Brian McKenna series - On a visit to Toronto, Det. Cisco Sanchez takes his new fiancée, Sue Hsu, to her uncle's restaurant, where she stumbles into a gang kidnapping of a kitchen worker and is killed. Executing swift justice, Sanchez holds off the local cops. Bailed out by his partner, Brian McKenna and their boss, Sanchez and his fellow NYPDers join forces with a Chinese investigator in Toronto. They soon discover that the Chinese gang responsible for the killing has been hired by the triad to "collect" big money payments from illegal Chinese aliens smuggled into New York and Toronto. Launching an attack in both cities, bodies pile up and the husband and wife triad enforcement team known as Boris and Natasha are captured in Toronto. The couple turn informer to protect their family, but the cops don't count on meeting up with Murray Don't Worry, a New York City lawyer. When the team finally targets Johnny Eng, the dragon head of the triad the action really picks up.

[Donna Halloran · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I think about the story and the characters, I think about how much I enjoyed it. That said, it took me much longer than expected to finish. I think it was really only 2 1/2 stars for me. There was a great deal of background information spread throughout the book and the format that this was told was boring to me.

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, I still look forward to reading about Det. Brian McKenna, but, Mr. Mahoney, please kill off his partner, Cisco Sanchez. These are otherwise great police procedurals, but I cannot read about Cisco, the world's greatest detective, anymore.

[Hrn1947 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cisco book. Good stoey and interesting stuff on Asian triads and tongs.

[Toesnorth's mom]

very good