Bad Traffic

In this "GREASED-LIGHTNING" crime debut (Kirkus Reviews), Simon Lewis has created two unforgettable characters and a critically acclaimed novel that will stay with you long after the final page is turned.

Inspector Jian is a corrupt Chinese cop who thinks he’s seen it all. But his search for his missing daughter takes him to the meanest streets he’s ever faced—in rural England.

Migrant worker Ding Ming is distressed—his gang master is making demands, he owes a lot of money to the snakeheads, and no one will tell him where his wife has been taken. Maybe England isn’t the Gold Mountain he was promised.

Two desperate men, lost in a baffling foreign land, are pitted against a ruthless band of human traffickers in this breath-taking thriller.

The Washington Post - Patrick Anderson

…offbeat and delightful…Lewis's narrative is fast-moving and flawless. His story dances between the comedy of cultural confusion and the tragedy of broken lives and broken dreams…A number of exceptionally literate thrillers have arrived this year from abroad, including Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Jonathan Barnes's The Somnambulist, Frank Tallis's Vienna Blood and Michael Cox's The Glass of Time. Lewis's Bad Traffic ranks with the best of them. It's said to be the first in a series about Inspector Jian. My advice is to get in on the ground floor.

Simon Lewis was born in Wales and grew up in Scotland. He is the author of the Rough Guides to China, Beijing, and Shanghai, and the backpacker novel Go, which he wrote in a village in the Himalayas. He spends half his time in Brixton, London, and the rest in Asia, mostly China and Japan.