City on Fire - by Simon Elegant (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A police detective in Hong Kong races to solve a vicious murder, while the city around him teeters on the brink of destruction.

Hong Kong is a city ablaze--its streets filled with protesters, its government in crisis, its people torn between rage and fear of what defiance might cost. At the center stands Superintendent Killian Tong, once a rising star in the police, now disgraced and haunted by a tragic accident at a protest. Exiled to a remote post, Killian is called back when a dismembered body is uncovered in a landfill. The gruesome murder could be his path to redemption--if he can withstand mounting pressure from superiors desperate to bury the truth, and the even more dangerous fractures within his own family.

His beloved younger sister Jun refuses to speak to him, devoting herself to the protest movement. Once inseparable, the siblings now face each other across barricades, Jun's fierce commitment pulling her closer to arrest and ruin.

As Killian follows the murder trail into Hong Kong's highest corridors of power, he must confront not only the city's corruption, but the searing question at his heart: When politics ignites a family war, can love survive the flames?

City on Fire is both a taut thriller and a deeply human story of loyalty, betrayal, and the search for redemption in a city under siege.

Review Quotes

"The David-and-Goliath struggle at the heart of the novel is thrilling to witness, and Elegant fortifies it with a complex portrait of Hong Kong's racial politics and a sobering study of widespread political malfeasance. Striking just the right balance of tension and emotional depth, this bruising thriller delivers the goods."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Simon Elegant's new novel, City on Fire, is a breakthrough work of fiction anchored in Mr. Elegant's experience as a foreign correspondent for the Washington Post and other publications. The mystery around the discovery of a body in a Hong Kong landfill, and the work of Superintendent Killian Tong to get to the bottom of it, grabs hold of the reader from the first page and does not let up. Mr. Elegant has written a taut, very timely novel set in Hong Kong as it undergoes monumental political change. With City on Fire, Mr. Elegant enters the top ranks of crime novelists."--Steve Wick, author of The Ruins

"City on Fire is a clever, subtly crafted police thriller set in the last days of a free Hong Kong. I rooted for the the hero, Superintendent Killian Tong, as he battled corrupt cops, cynical Catholic priests and his burn-it-down radical sister to solve a crime--as Beijing's agents were smothering protest on the streets. Simon Elegant has the smell of corruption in a rotting Hong Kong in his nostrils."--David Ignatius, New York Times bestselling author of Body of Lies

"The author's experience as a journalist richly informs his depiction of recent protest movement in Hong Kong. The result is reminiscent of vintage Chandler, with its complicated plot, jaded and righteous hero, and terse noir dialogue. A brisk noir with roots in contemporary politics."-- "Kirkus Reviews"

"I tore through this book. Elegant evokes changing Hong Kong wonderfully. As one key character says, 'This was going to be a new Hong Kong. Chinese Hong Kong. No. Beijing's Hong Kong. The party's Hong Kong.' This is the perfect book to take on a trans-Pacific flight."--Thomas E. Ricks, author of We Can't Save You and Big Money, Small Town

"Is the home you love worth fighting for? This is the central question posed by Simon Elegant's riveting new Hong Kong novel City on Fire. Set against the 2019 protests, this crime drama highlights emotions in a city burning with conflict, desperately trying to shape its future. Elegant's crisp writing and dark comedy offer an insider's tale of a fraught city yearning for a better tomorrow. Page turner, highly recommended."--Xu Xi, Hong Kong novelist, author of That Man In Our Lives and Habit of a Foreign Sky

"City on Fire is a gripping, terrific novel."--Adrian McKinty, bestselling writer of the award-winning thriller The Chain and the Sean Duffy novels

About the Author

Simon Elegant is China bureau chief for The Washington Post, based in Taiwan. Previously, he held a variety of reporting and editing jobs in Asia including Beijing bureau chief and Southeast Asia correspondent for Time magazine. Elegant was the founding partner and investor in Temple Restaurant Beijing, which won the 2019 readers' choice award from TripAdvisor as the world's best restaurant.

He is the author of two previous novels, A Chinese Wedding (Piatkus), and A Floating Life (Ecco/Harper), about China's greatest poet, Li Bai, a novel that succeeded "in summoning up the man and his age in ways that are both deliciously foreign and all too familiar," according to the New York Times.