by Charles Philipp Martin
February 3 – 28, 2025 Virtual Book Tour
Synopsis:
AN INSPECTOR LOK NOVEL
Horace Yang, a downtrodden office worker haunted by failure,
betrayal, and brutal imprisonment during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, has
finally found a way to settle the score. Obsessed with revenge, he
presses on to a confrontation that can only end in death.
In Hong Kong’s teeming Yau Ma Tei district, a body is found in a gangster’s limousine. The murder case takes Inspector Lok and his team deep into the heart of the city’s criminal life. Eventually Lok’s investigation uncovers an evil spawned in the turmoil of 1960s China, where a vicious regime exploited fear and terrorized the masses.
Rented Grave is a crime story about Hong Kong, a modern city entangled in China’s past. Some can’t forget that past, for their wounds still bleed, and their voices still cry out for revenge.
GUEST POST:
Inspector Lok and his Team: Investigative Interplay
Charles Philipp Martin
The best police teams are living organisms, in which each member works to keep the whole thriving. My suspense novel Rented Grave, like its predecessor Neon Panic, concerns a Hong Kong Police investigation team solving a Hong Kong crime. The crime, a murder/kidnapping, is bound up in the city’s unusual criminal culture; it could only have happened in Hong Kong. And to solve a uniquely Hong Kong crime, you need a uniquely Hong Kong investigation team.
That team in Rented Grave is headed up by Inspector Herman Lok. Forthright, undramatic, and self-effacing, Lok is no Dirty Harry. He believes that you catch criminals with good police work, and that’s what he expects of his team as they solve crimes in the YauTsim district, a teeming sector of Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula.
Four Detective Police Constables comprise Lok’s team. Like Lok, the characters of the team grew out of people I met in Hong Kong, stories I heard in police canteens and street markets, and my need as a writer to make each character bring out the best and worst in the others.
Two of the men are young, two older, and all four tackle crimes using their unique attributes. We know them only by nicknames, because Hong Kong people love to give out sobriquets based on physical or behavioral characteristics.Inspector Lok and his Team: Investigative Interplay
Million Man. His Chinese nickname is man yan mai, or “millions fall in love with him.” Young, brash, something of a legend in his own mind, he is a certified ladies’ man who has always gotten by using his charm. He feels he’s headed for big things.
Ears. At school his friends called him dao fung yee, or “change wind ears,” because the wind supposedly got deflected when it struck those appendages on the side of his head. He’s much more timid than Million Man, as sometimes happens when you grow up on the funny-looking side. But Ears is very motivated as a policeman, and when he applied to the force, his superiors didn’t want motivation like that to go to waste.
Big Pang. He’s six-two, outrageously handsome, and worse, doesn’t seem to realize the latter fact, even though women practically line up to be questioned by him. Gregarious and hardworking, he seems to have it all together. Even Inspector Lok thinks that Big Pang is the one guy who’s got it down.
Old Ko. As his name implies, he’s older than the others, well into middle age. Not every constable can be promoted; sheer numbers dictate that some people must be left behind, and somehow (actually, it’s explained why in Rented Grave) Old Ko is the one who stayed a Detective Police Constable when people like Lok advanced. Old Ko is not bitter about his stagnated career — he’s a good cop who uses his talents and knowledge well — but he is cynical. His pastimes are gambling and ribbing the younger officers.
What matters more than the individuals on the team is how they work together, how personalities clash and sparks fly. Million Man constantly makes fun of Old Ko because he sees himself headed for Inspector or even higher, and he sees the older officer like a dinosaur trapped in career tar, soon
to be a fossil. Old Ko, of course, mocks Million Man for thinking that he knows everything at his young age.
Both of them kid Ears for being shy and inexperienced. Some people are born with a target on their backs; Ears has one on each side of his head.
Big Pang is beyond kidding, as they all secretly envy his easygoing manner and self-confidence. It is fate, and not his colleauges, that will shake up Big Pang’s world in the sequel to Rented Grave. Meanwhile, he prefers to gamble at mahjong, which he feels he has some control over, while Old Ko prefers the horses at Sha Tin racetrack; that way, he can blame his losses on bad luck, not insufficent skill.
In police work, personalities matter. Whlle canvassing a crime scene In Neon Panic, Million Man wants to give up when no one answers the door. But Ears notices an old lady peeking out, and he’s later able to befriend her and gently pump her for information. Million Man is more at home at bars, where he can shoot the breeze with customers; Ears not so much. Old Ko is hopeless with a computer, but he’s seen a lot, and he knows the city’s criminal history backwards. When Ears and Million Man are clueless about an incident or name from the past, Old Ko takes snide pleasure in enlightening them.
Ultimately, what matters is that the crime gets solved. Inspector Lok has assembled a team that, for all its differences and idiosyncrasies, is designed to do that, and provide what I hope is some cracking suspense and entertainment in the process.
Book Details:
Genre: Mystery
Published by: Level Best Books
Publication Date: August 13, 2024
Number of Pages: 270
ISBN: 9781685126780 (ISBN10: 1685126782)
Series: An Inspector Lok Novel, 1
Book Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookShop.org | Goodreads | Level Best Books
Read an excerpt:
Chapter 1
Rented Grave
Yau Ma Tei District, Hong Kong, Friday, 7:31 p.m. It was not supposed to be like this.
Again the words come back to Horace Yang, persistent as the cat he kicks in the alley by his home, that wretched bag of fur that returns nightly to beg for what Horace doesn’t have.
The words come back, like the blotch on his toe, a mustard-colored rot that vanishes with a touch of rice vinegar, only to bloom again when it dries.
He banishes the words from his mind, but they return.
It was not supposed to be like this.
They return when he awakens in his flat, which seems to shrink by the year, and again when he takes the day’s work orders and prepares for the day’s disappointments.
It was not supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be different.
The words remain after other words are forgotten. They remain after he answers a question from his son, a boy without guile and without future. At night they keep him company in bed, while he counts the ways that life has thwarted him. And now they return in full voice as he clutches a knife bought in haste to kill a man.
There should have been time to plan, time to choose the weapon and the place, perhaps even a minute to tell Mo what he thought of him first. That would have felt good, might have eased the stress. That was how it was supposed to be.
But for Horace, things are never as they’re supposed to be.
It should be dark, but darkness, like silence, doesn’t happen in Mongkok. A faint glow washes in from lamps on Temple Street. Filthy and forgotten windows at the back of the restaurant shed their anemic light on crates full of rotting choi sum.
Horace approaches the dormant limousine, adding a few inches to his stride to speed things up.
Given more time, he could have taken control, and not had to sneak around. Why is it that people like him, who have the best minds and the keenest ambition, are the ones who can never get control?
One last look around. Except for Horace, the alley is empty. No one is passing on Temple Street behind him or on Woosung Street at the far end. If it’s to happen, it must happen now.
Horace grabs the handle and throws the door wide open to reveal a small figure in the glint of the dome light.
“Who…?” The man stares up in confusion.
He drives the knife into the man’s chest. They both gasp.
Up to this moment, Horace has thought only of himself: his own need for cover, for speed, for getting the thing done and getting away. And, of course, his resentment at how things have turned out.
Now, the deed done, he pauses to look at the man.
The wrong man. Not Mo Tun.
A stranger lies on the seat, eyes rigid in horror and pain. And then Horace sees what he hasn’t allowed himself to see till now.
Next to the dead man, another pair of eyes.
***
Excerpt from Rented Grave by Charles Martin. Copyright 2025 by Charles Martin. Reproduced with permission from Charles Martin. All rights reserved.
Author Bio:
Charles Philipp Martin grew up in New York City’s Greenwich Village. His father was an opera conductor and both his parents well-known opera translators and librettists who never uttered the word “parenting” but knew enough to steep their family in music and literature. After attending Columbia University and Manhattan School of Music, Martin took off for a six-year paid vacation in the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.
While in Hong Kong he hung up his bow and turned to writing, spending four years as a Sunday Magazine columnist for the South China Morning Post, and writing for magazines all over Southeast Asia. His weekly jazz radio show 3 O’Clock Jump was heard every Saturday on Hong Kong’s Radio 3 for some two decades.
Neon Panic, a suspense novel which introduced Hong Kong policeman Inspector Herman Lok, was published in 2011. His most recent novel is Rented Grave, the first in a new series featuring Inspector Herman Lok. Martin now lives in Seattle with his wife Catherine.
Catch Up With Charles Philipp Martin:
www.NeonPanic.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads – @cpmartin
Instagram – @writecharliewrite
Bluesky – @neonpanic.bsky.social
Facebook – @HongKongSuspense
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