Mandarin Plaid

Mandarin Plaid is book 3 in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith Mysteries.  6 novels in the series have already been published. The story opens with the theft of designer Genna Jing's sketches of her inaugural collection of her new Mandarin Plaid label. Genna is positive that these designs are worth a fortune so when she is contacted by the thief who demands a $50,000 ransom, she is willing to pay. Genna contacts Lydia Chin, a Chinese American private investigator, to perform the drop. However, during the drop everything goes wrong. Lydia loses the ransom money and her partner Bill Smith is arrested. Genna is shocked about the loss of her money and sketches and fires Lydia. Unable to let it go, Lydia and Bill continue to look into matter and are led from sweatshops in New York City's Chinatown to the drawing rooms of New York's wealthiest citizens and into the dark underworld of prostitution, drugs and murder. The task they have taken on includes no only to find out who stole the ransom money but also who is willing to kill in order to keep all of this a secret.

The story started out slow. A conversation about the need to drop the ransom ran several pages and some of the characters repeated the same information over and over. While the conversation was realistic it did not advance the plot and I was bored. The author wrote about the fashion business which was appealing to me as I enjoy sewing. There were a number of aspects to putting on a runway show that I was not familiar with and it added some enjoyment to the story. However, I still  could not become engaged in the novel. The characters didn't captivate me either. The dialogue between Lydia and Bill was boring. Yes, people actually talk like they did but it detracted from solving the mystery. The slow beginning seemed to have a snowball effect that I was unable to overcome. The plot premise was good though and the title of the fashion collection was sublime. 

An entire series could be written about the travails of the fashion business and this fashion label specifically. It would need to be executed better. Unfortunately, I can only rate this mystery 2 out of 5 stars. I feel bad about the rating because this story had considerable promise and is highly rated by other reviewers.