Snake Agent

A surprising cocktail of Chinese Fantasy, detective fiction, and science fiction that manages to still taste good. The novel is set in a futuristic China (future Shanghai) and incorporates high technology and the supernatural. Overall it’s a clever and pretty absorbing novel. The best description for this would be the Asian version of The Dresden Files. Inspecter Chen is a cop assigned to special cases that involve Hell; basically, he’s the go-to guy for dealing with anything supernatural. Normally, humans wouldn’t stand a chance against the forces of Hell, but Chen has an ace up his sleeve - he’s been granted the protection of the goddess Kuan Yin and well, his wife is a demon. This series won’t blow your socks off, but I recommend it because it manages to smash a bunch of genres that normally never touch into something that works and works well.

Books in The Detective Inspector Chen Series (4)

Booklists having this book

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Best Asian Fantasy Books

So you like fantasy with martial arts, swords, ninjas, or just something different that’s not set in the same old ‘knights, lords, and wizards duking it out in some generic... Read more

Best Urban Fantasy Books

This is perhaps one of the more difficult sub-genres to place books in simply because it’s so open-ended in terms of what can be included. The one quintessential element of... Read more

Other books by Williams, Liz

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Snake Agent

A surprising cocktail of Chinese Fantasy, detective fiction, and science fiction that manages to still taste good. The novel is set in a futuristic China (future Shanghai) and incorporates high... Read more

The Demon And The City

The second Detective Inspector Chen novel (after Snake Agent) returns us to Singapore Three. A mysterious murder sends Chen and his demonic partner Zhu Irzh on the trail of a... Read more

Precious Dragon

The spell-casting detective and his demonic partner go to Hell on a fact-finding mission in this "pleasantly suspenseful . . . fantastical mystery" (Publishers Weekly). For years, the embarrassing secret... Read more

The Iron Khan

The second Detective Inspector Chen novel traverses a wildly imaginative landscape based on Chinese mythology, with humans mingling with demons, Celestials and the deceased. When rich girl Deveth Sardai turns... Read more

The Demon And The City

When Detective Inspector Chen goes on holiday, his demonic partner Zhu Irzh finds himself alone in Singapore Three. The missing body of a brutally murdered socialite and the strange experiments... Read more

Precious Dragon

"Dark, gorgeous...feels authentically Chinese and it works like a charm." --Washington Post Book World on A Case of Two Cities Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is... Read more

The Shadow Pavilion

'Brilliant' -Publishers Weekly Starred Review The legendary Judge Dee Renjie investigates a high-profile murder case in this intriguing companion novel to Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder set in... Read more

The Iron Khan

A supernatural mystery set in Singapore featuring a "detective whose beat reaches to the fringes of Heaven and Hell," by the author of Snake Agent (Booklist). No mortal has ever... Read more

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