The Chinese Alchemist

Publishers Weekly

In Hamilton's diverting 11th cozy featuring Lara McClintoch (after 2006's The Orkney Scroll), the Canadian globe-trotting antiques expert first faces peril from an Asian organized crime gang, the Golden Lotus, angered by the efforts of Mounty Sgt. Rob Luckza, her significant other, to end its terrorizing of the Chinatown of an unnamed Canadian city that resembles Toronto. Lara keeps a low profile until an old friend, Chinese art historian Dory Matthews, asks her to go to New York to bid on a rare Chinese silver box, but the desired item is brazenly stolen from the auction house. After Dory's sudden death, Lara learns that her friend's will requested that she pursue the box. Lara travels to Beijing, where a series of narrow escapes leaves a trail of bodies in her wake. Despite the often-clunky exposition (both of Chinese history and of the motive behind the crimes), longtime series fans will enjoy seeing McClintoch in action in China. (Apr.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal

A stolen Tang Dynasty box that holds an alchemical formula for the elixir of immortality may shorten antiques dealer Lara McClintoch's life in her 11th adventure. Hamilton lives in Toronto. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Chinese history from the perspective of a royal concubine, a eunuch, a family of tomb raiders and even the Chairman himself. Although Toronto antiques dealer Lara McClintoch (The Orkney Scroll, 2006, etc.) is prepared to spend up to $500,000 to obtain a T'ang Dynasty silver box for her friend and client Dory Zhang, the auction house removes it from the sale at the last moment, to the disappointment of Lara and the chagrin of rival bidder Burton Haldimand, acting on behalf of the Cottingham Museum, philanthropist/collector Xie Jinghe and a young Asian in knockoff Hugo Bass duds. When Dory dies, her will, which stipulates that Lara is to pursue the box wherever it reappears, sends her out on the next plane to Beijing and the Cherished Treasure Auction House, where Haldimand and Dr. Xie stand by, still coveting the box, which is stolen on the eve of the sale. Rather than return home immediately, as he said he intended, Haldimand scours the antique stalls seeking clues to its whereabouts. He winds up in X'ian, the capital of the T'ang Dynasty. Lara follows, as does murder. Hamilton, who rivals Jan Morris as a travel writer, gives her eunuch Wu Yuan such a mesmerizing story about serving the Imperial Palace and the Son of Heaven that it's a bit of a thud to be brought back to the problems of contemporary households.