Chasing the Dragon

Rating:
Summary: Just Short of Wholly Satisfying
Review:
Chasing the Dragon is an enigma. Aspects of this book are very, very good. Other elements, however, leave much to be desired. At times, the latter almost (but not quite!) overshadow the former. What results is a story that will entertain, touch and excite you: a story in which "the good" predominates but one in which "the bad and the ugly" will also leave you scratching your head in puzzlement.

Dante Mancuso is an ex-San Francisco homicide detective now living in New Orleans where he does the occasional odd job for a shadowy intelligence/security agency called simply "the Company." One night Mancuso receives a phone call from his Uncle Salvatore informing him that his ailing father has died. The Company seizes on this personal tragedy to send Dante undercover in his old neighborhood, the North Beach area of San Francisco. While back home for the funeral Mancuso is to pick up the pieces of his old life, which means insinuating his way back into the family business of running a wharf-side warehouse. His aim is to set up a sting operation involving some shady local businessmen and a powerful Chinese family rumored to be involved in heroin smuggling.

But, as that famous novelist says, you can't go home again. In addition to rekindling the flame of a painful old romance, Dante is also haunted by the case that drove him off the police force and out of `Frisco in the first place - the disappearance of a Chinese businessman and his family and the murder of an important local politician. After his uncle is murdered, Mancuso begins to fear that there may be a sinister connection between those events from nearly a decade ago and his family's business.

In places, the plot of Chasing the Dragon is opaque at best and, at worst, downright murky. As compelling as the characters are their motivation is never clearly or persuasively set forth. What's more, the role of the Company and their purpose in orchestrating events as they do is left frustratingly obscure. Is this a private security firm or a government agency of some sort? Simple questions such as that are never adequately addressed.

That being said, one still has to give Stansberry very high marks for his brilliant and evocative use of local color. The author brings the streets of North Beach literally alive in the pages of this book. Vallejo and Fresno streets appear, as do Grant and Columbus avenues for example. Anyone familiar with that lovely old section of San Francisco - and even those that aren't - will feel the fog brush against their cheeks and their calves begin to tighten as he or she walks with the novel's characters up the steep stairways and sidewalks that are so much a part of that picturesque area.

The problems with this book notwithstanding, there's certainly enough promise in its pages to warrant the reader keeping his or her eyes out for the author's next offering in a projected series featuring Dante Mancuso. One hopes that there he will "accentuate the positive" and clear up some of the ambiguity that causes this book to fall just short of being wholly satisfying. (James Clar-MYSTERY NEWS)










Rating:
Summary: exciting crime thriller
Review: After working for the San Francisco Police Department for seven years, Dante Mancuso wasn't satisfied the way a case ended up; he pursued it against the orders of his superiors. Internal Affairs booted him out on trumped up charges. The shadowy Company recruited him and has sent him on assignments around the world. His latest is that he should return to San Francisco, go to his father's funeral, and get reacquainted with old friends and his ex-girlfriend.

He is to arrange a sting between the Wus (a Chinese family with legal and illegal businesses that use the Mancuso warehouse for temporary storage) and two drug traffickers Mason Wow and Yosek Faton (an ex con affiliated with the Nation of Islam). Dante learns that his father thought someone was out to kill him; he gave the negatives of pictures to his brother Sal who gave them to Dante. When Sal is murdered, Dante thinks it has to do with the pictures of illegal immigrants dead in a case on a ship. These pictures lead Dante back to why he was kicked off SFPD with hopes the truth will finally come out during the sting and its aftermath.

The protagonist is a survivor and a man who didn't believe a killer's confession. This led him in to the world of the Company, where rules are made to be broken and operations are quasi-legal. His discovery of the truth about the man's death seven years ago changes nothing and he has to learn to live with his place in the world now. Domenic Stansberry has written an exciting crime thriller where actions are shades of gray and people are not always who they seem.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A tough and thoroughly unsentimental book
Review: Since being thrown off the North Beach police force several years ago, the obsessive Dante Mancuso has made ends meet by taking on assignments given to him by the quasi-governmental shadow agency known as "the Company." Although Mancuso has done many questionable things while in the Company's employ, he chooses to believe he's been working for a greater good.

Upon the death of his father, the Company asks him to return to his hometown and set up a sting against some local hoods. After attending the old man's funeral, Mancuso is forced to deal with the emotions his father's death has aroused, the ghosts of his troubled past, and the Company's hidden agenda. Doing so, he slowly uncovers a deadly web of deceit.

Obviously fascinated by his protagonist's unrelenting nature, Stansberry explores it by plunging Mancuso into a brutal, unforgiving environment where the slightest mistake could prove fatal; Mancuso's already fragile psyche suffers further trauma as shock follows shock. Although he's a survivor, one wonders if the emotional wounds he's suffered over the years may ultimately prove his undoing. As this novel is proclaimed the first in a new series, it will be interesting to see how Mancuso handles the brutal jolts he endures here.

Chasing the Dragon takes a tough, unsentimental look at the world of crime and law enforcement, where the lines between good and evil are blurred and the good guys don't always come out on top. While Dante Mancuso's world is not one you'd like to inhabit, it certainly is worth visiting.