Wendy Lu

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Created by Timothy J. Lockhart

Serving in the US Navy, WENDY LU did fine. But as a cop, she screwed up.

Big time.

A momentary rookie mistake resulted in the death of her partner Bobby. Who was also her lover.

Ooops!

She pretty much hit rock bottom after that. Grief. Depression. Guilt. The feeling she’s disgraced her family. Disappointed her Chinese-American  parents. 

She hit the booze, and it hit back.

But she climbed out of that hole, cleaned herself up. Became a private op for Marcus Jefferson’s Reliable Investigations, based in Virginia Beach. Still serves as a reserve in the Navy.  Tries to stay on the straight and narrow. Of course, she’s still got issues, particularly with her mother.

But then, that’s to be expected. Mother issues, we’re reminded frequently here, are a big deal among Chinese-Americans, and Wendy, unlike her tow-the-line, happily married siblings (one brother, one sister), is a bit of an outlier in the family. They all live in Virginia Beach, relatively close to each other. Wendy? She’s down the road a bit, living alone in Norfolk, but she’s well aware how her family members view her “unusual career choices”.

In fact, in her second outing, Broken Kite (026), it’s at her mother’s insistence that she convinces her boss, Marcus, to take on a missing persons case. Seems the sister of one of her mother’s friends, a fellow Chinese immigrant, has gone missing.

Wendy proves to be a stubborn and determined investigator, betraying a surprising empathy at times and possibly a little too much eagerness for cutting corners, and surprisingly few reservations about breaking and entering.

Throughout the series, the author touches (but lightly) on the struggles of being an immigrant, of constantly trying to adjust and adapt, constantly struggling to meet the demands and expectations of  a new world, of trying to hold on to your own identity while trying to rewire it completely. In Wendy’s case, it also means meeting her family’s expectations, and you know it ain’t easy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Timothy J. Lockhart, a lawyer and former US Navy intelligence officer who worked with the CIA, is the author of Smith (2017), Pirates (2019), and A Certain Man’s Daughter (2021), as well as the Wendy Lu series, all from Stark House Press. He has also written articles and book reviews for a variety of publications, including Naval Intelligence Quarterly, Naval War College Review, and The Virginian-Pilot. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, with his wife and daughter.

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FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

 

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