Book Summary and Reviews of The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny

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Janine_S

Global terrorism mystery
Louise Penny is a master storyteller. I’ve loved her Inspector Gamache series, so was excited by this book written with Mellissa Fung. It delivered!

Alice Li, a food blogger, is somewhat estranged from her famous mother, Vivian Li, a famous Chinese dissident. But when strange signal comes out of China, mother and daughter are brought together to unearth the reason for the alarm and to prevent another. Clearly global terrorism is at work. When the second alarm comes, it’s worse than the first. The Chinese are sure it’s American.

The book is suspense filled political thriller as the Li women work to prevent a global catastrophe. It explores many political and family dynamic theme as well.

I’d like to thank NetGalley and Minotaur for allowing me access to this ARC.

Janine_S

Interesting mystery
Louise Penny is a master storyteller. I've loved her Inspector Gamache series, so was excited by this book written with Mellissa Fung. It delivered! Alice Li, a food blogger, is somewhat estranged from her famous mother, Vivian Li, a famous Chinese dissident. But when strange signal comes out of China, mother and daughter are brought together to unearth the reason for the alarm and to prevent another. Clearly global terrorism is at work. When the second alarm comes, it's worse than the first. The Chinese are sure it's American.

The book is suspense filled political thriller as the Li women work to prevent a global catastrophe. It explores many political and family dynamic theme as well.
I'd like to thank NetGalley and Minotaur for allowing me access to this ARC.

labmom55

Entertaining but not believable
The Last Mandarin is the second stand-alone thriller that Louise Penny has written with a co-author. In this case, Mellisa Fung, a Canadian journalist with CBC News. The book is quite different from her Armande Gamache series. It focuses much more on action than philosophy.

As with all thrillers, the plot requires a significant amount of suspended belief. Or at least, I hope it does. Alice Li is meeting her mother, Vivien Li, a famous Chinese dissident and now a human rights activist, for breakfast in DC. All of a sudden, alarms are going off everywhere, like around the world everywhere. When both women are called to a meeting at the White House, Alice learns a friend of hers was actually a spy and she was the recipient of his last message before his death. The signal for the event is traced back to China. The question is whether it was instigated by the Chinese government or a faction opposed to that government.

Things move at a brisk pace from there. The story focuses on Alice and Vivien, but also gives us glimpses into the POVs of both the American and Chinese presidents. I was pleased that both presidents come across as fleshed out and not cliches.
In addition to the international drama, the authors also focus on the fraught mother-daughter relationship.

I was a huge fan of State of Terror, mainly because it felt believable. This was less successful for me, although it’s good entertainment. I appreciated the way the authors wove the history of the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, into the story.

I was lucky enough to have advance copies of both the e-book and audiobook. Eunice Wong was a good narrator and I appreciated learning the correct pronunciation of many Chinese words. Plus, audiobooks always tend to provide that extra oomph of tension to a thriller.

My thanks to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press and Macmillan Audio for advance copies of this book.

Other books by Louise Penny at BookBrowse

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