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Inspector Jian is a policeman in a Chinese province out near the border with Siberia. He reckons he can take care of himself in any situation – until he finds himself adrift in England looking for his missing daughter. He drops everything and legs it over to England after his daughter phones, screaming for his help. All he has to help him in this strange land is a message scribbled on the back of a airplane boarding pass: "This man have come from China to find his daughter who have some trouble. He does not speak English." Meanwhile, migrant worker Ding Yi is just realising the horrors of his new situation. He's paid a fortune to be smuggled into the UK together with his wife, but those promises that were made turn out to be empty ones. And no one will tell him where his wife has been taken. So when his and Jian's paths cross, they end up pulling in different directions but reluctantly have to work together to save their lives and to track down the people who are so important to them. BAD TRAFFIC is an absolutely exceptional novel which had me mesmerised. It feels like a noir film, and has a distinct cinematic quality to it. Much of the action takes place in rural England where it's dark, wet and cold, and the natives remain very much in the background. The fact that the point of view is so firmly rooted with Jian and Ding Yi is what makes the book so powerful. They truly have been dumped in the middle of an alien culture where only soccer seems to span international boundaries. Human trafficking and migrant workers are themes popping up frequently in modern crime fiction. But Simon Lewis, who apparently lives in both London and Shanghai, gives it a gritty and moving twist. BAD TRAFFIC is a first venture into crime fiction for tiny London publishers Sort Of Books. Both they and Lewis look destined for much bigger things.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, January 2008
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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