There’s the British army major who impregnates a 12-year-old Jamaican girl and becomes a major source of hush money. White people are almost invariably bad news. This is the most intense episode among a slew of scandals. Spoiled, hoity-toity Fay never accepts being married to a hoodlum, and eventually stuns Pao by abducting their two children and stealing away to England. Extending his reach beyond Chinatown, Pao offers protection to a brothel and becomes romantically involved with Gloria, its black madam but when it comes to marriage, he passes over his true love to land a bigger fish: Fay Wong, daughter of a wealthy supermarket owner. Nice Guy will get his comeuppance in his personal life. What energizes him as a fictional creation is the voice Young has given him: hip and effervescent. His smooth ascent distinguishes him from the conventional racketeer who must claw his blood-soaked way to the top. In 1945, Zhang retires, and 21-year-old Pao becomes the new lord of Chinatown.

He takes to Jamaican street culture like a duck to water, acquiring his own loyal lieutenants, black kids useful as muscle he cuts his first deal, distributing navy surplus, with a corrupt U.S. Zhang shakes down the Chinatown merchants Pao becomes his apprentice. His father has been killed by European soldiers dismembering China, but in Jamaica he finds a surrogate father in Zhang, his father’s best friend. Pao is just a kid when he arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1938. Against a backdrop of Jamaican history, a likable Chinese-Jamaican runs rackets in this eye-opening, rambunctious debut.

Gloria by kerry young