The Dead Can't Make a Living - (Taipei Night Market Novel) by Ed Lin (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"A unique blend of tension, charm, tragedy, and optimism, with characters you'll love and a setting so real you'll think you've been there. Highly recommended."--Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series

Ed Lin's big-hearted, eye-opening fifth installment in the fan-favorite Taipei Night Market series

Jing-nan, the owner of the most popular food stand in Taipei's world-famous Shilin night market, is hauling trash after a successful evening of hawking Taiwanese delicacies to tourists when he finds a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. The dead man turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who came to Taiwan for a job at a massive ZHD food processing plant.

Jing-nan is haunted by Ramos's story, and by the heartbreak of his family, who arrive in Taipei looking for answers. ZHD has a history of safety violations, and activists have a hunch Ramos's death might be part of a cover-up. Meanwhile, Jing-nan's gangster uncle, Big Eye, has his own mysterious, probably illegal, reasons for being concerned about what's going on in ZHD. He pressures Jing-nan into a daring and risky mission: going undercover as a migrant laborer to get a job at the food processing plant and report back about the conditions inside. Jing-nan hopes to find out the truth for the Ramos family, and to save other immigrant lives--but first he has to survive the spy operation.

The Dead Can't Make a Living is at once a rollicking crime novel and a scorchingly timely examination of our global dependence on undocumented immigrants and the inhumane labor conditions that underpin modern conveniences.

Review Quotes

Praise for the Taipei Night Market Series

"A smart, stylish thriller for the mind, heart, and gut. Sex, music, history, politics, food, humor, and just a touch of violence and death--you get it all."
--Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

"Marvelously mordant."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A master of Taipei noir. [Ed Lin] proves every good crime novel is a social novel."
--Los Angeles Times

"A unique blend of tension, charm, tragedy and optimism, with characters you'll love, and a setting so real you'll think you've been there. Highly recommended."
--Lee Child

About the Author

Ed Lin is a journalist by training and an all-around stand-up kinda guy. He's the author of four other novels in the Taipei Night Market series: Ghost Month, Incensed, 99 Ways to Die, and Death Doesn't Forget, as well as five other novels. Lin, who is of Chinese and Taiwanese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards. He lives in New York with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung, and son.