Golden Gate is more than a place

The Golden Gate
by Amy Chua

The Golden Gate of the title is a hotel catering to the rich and infamous in San Francisco, and it's also a not-subtle delineation of the barriers that wealth and fame create to keep truth and justice at bay. A boffo prologue tells us there’s been a murder. In the first few pages, there are actually two deaths. And three golden girls--wealthy and beautiful cousins--who are all suspects. We don’t know all the players yet but we can be pretty sure things are going to keep on happening.

There’s a strong flavour of San Francisco noir, the cynical cop getting the runaround from wealthy businessman and politicians. Except this cop is half-Latino and thus very conscious of his race-based risk if he calls them out on their lies. He's worked hard to pass as white on the force, even using his mother's maiden name instead of his father's Mexican surname. Indirectly  at first, later more directly, the Japanese Internment of WW2 plays a role. Distinct overtones of Lavender House by Lev A. C. Rosen.

The chapters trip around in time between the first Golden Gate death, of a child, and the second, of a well known and much despised politician early in WW2. It's a slow unveiling of that ever-popular plot: rich Americans behaving badly. It's the author's first foray into crime fiction and that shows in the technique of revealing most of the useful backstory (and the solution) not through the detective's own efforts but through intermittent pieces of a long statement by the golden girls' grandmother, produced on the thinnest of legal pretexts.

There’s lots of evidence here that Amy Chua is better known for her nonfiction, as page after page elides away from the ongoing story into neutral-voice narration of San Francisco’s, and America’s, history. The history and culture are interesting as sidelights on the setting. Several characters are either real people, or fictional ones whose life events are lifted from then-living people. But those digressions, like the grandmother's statement, tend to distance us from caring about the characters or becoming fully immersed in exploring the plot.

 

As Chua is a talented writer and cares deeply about producing textured backgrounds rich in historical detail, her next mystery novel will almost surely be better, with the background serving as, well, background and the characters allowed to fully explore their own unfolding story. 

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