What a fun book 9tail Fox is! The premise is that world-weary San Francisco police sergeant Bobby Zha finds himself murdered, possibly by his own partner. As he lays dying on a warehouse floor, an old Chinese ghost, the nine tail fox, visits him. Next thing he knows he’s waking up in New York City. Still world-weary, he now has a purpose: find out who killed him and why. The premise isn’t new (Altered Carbon, and the next book I’m about to read Homicide My Own), but Grimwood makes it pretty interesting. 9tail Fox contains a great combination of eastern mysticism, San Francisco noir, and post-Soviet spy intrigue.
Certainly there’s a few parts of the plot that don’t hold up to close scrutiny. The entire plot is connected together with dozens of coincidences. Normally, too much coincidence bothers me. The audacity of the story makes up for the random connections though. I’d almost say that Grimwood wrote them purposefully, using them to build an even grander story.
A lot of the story’s success rides on Bobby Zha’s character. It’s 98% first person. The couple of points where the narrative switched to someone else (sometimes without transition) jarred me even. Putting him in someone else’s body unbeknown to any of the other characters gives the story somewhat of a Dickensian A Christmas Carol aspect. The sometimes grimy San Francisco streets would certainly fit with a Dickens tale had he set one of his tales in northern California. He does get to see his relatives and colleagues do cry and gnash their teeth, but he also witnesses their opinions about his character too. The reader watches as Bobby Zha realizes what a shit he’d become, his downtrod outlook having served as an excuse for him to more or less not give a rip about anyone else.
It’s a shame one of the bigger publishers didn’t pick this book up to give it more widespread prominence. I need to pay more attention to what Night Shade Books puts out and grab some of them.
A few other blogged reviews:
- Stephen Wu
- Richard Marcus
- SFSite
- Bookgasm
- Adventures in Reading
- The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.
- Grumpy Old Bookman
Title: 9tail Fox
Author: Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Cover creator: Jon Foster (artist) / Claudia Noble (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Night Shade Books
Format: Paperback
Length: 259 p.
Publication date: May 2007
ISBN-13: 978-1-59780-078-5
