Product Description

A noir melding of ancient Chinese folklore, organised crime and cutting edge medical technology. A policeman is murdered in San Francisco. And spends the rest of the novel hunting down the man who did it. And trying to get the answer to some terrifying questions. Why is he in another man's body? Why is someone trying to kill him. Again. And why is he being haunted by a nine tailed Albino fox? From the shell-shattered streets of Stalingrad in 1942 to the back allys of San Fransico's chinatown, evocative of place, crystal clear in its depiction of character this is literary fantastic fiction at its most compelling from one of the most exciting writers working today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #165598 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

CRIME CONFIDENTIAL
"This futuristic thriller is a great read."

Review
"This is an unusual blend of crime noir, Chinese mythology, and cutting edge medical technology which combine to form an absorbing thriller with a unique twist in the tale." (YORKSHIRE EVENING POST )

Daily Telegraph
'Grimwood's is a distinct imagination, and his muscular, lucid and polished prose brings it beautifully to the page.'

Customer Reviews

Excellent, but be prepared to exercise your brain to keep up!
I bought this on a whim to read on the bus in the morning, and discovered that I couldn't just leave off when my stop was next -- I had to keep reading once I got home and finished it within two days. This is the first of Jon Courtenay Grimwood's books I've read, so I had no idea what to expect. You're kept guessing until the end, and while there's a definite feeling of nearly having the full picture, he successfully keeps you in the dark until it's time to wrap it up and go home. Gritty and cynical without leaving you feeling like you need to wash your brain out, 9Tail Fox is a refreshing distraction for anyone who loves a good mystery, and one which will leave your head spinning hours after you're done and wishing it hadn't had to end.

(A brief summary, as there's none currently entered)
Bobby Zha was a streetwise San Fransisco cop. Not a stellar one, but he had a few redeeming qualities. Then someone killed him and set him up to look like a crooked cop, indeed, and it seems no-one's following up on the case. And he wants to know why. Why he was killed, why he's still alive but wearing the face of another man, and why the nine-tailed celestial fox keeps appearing to him. In a world set slightly in the future where coincidence is an illusion, the supernatural hovers on the periphery of one's gaze and everyone carries secrets, Bobby has to piece together the shattered mirror of his own life and his last few days as Bobby Zha before his second chance runs out of time.

A good read
9Tail Fox is rated in the blurb on the back as noir crime, SF and Oriental legend. It is mainly noir crime, with the SF and legend playing important parts but not being the focus of the story. It is a good read, but you have to hang on to several threads while you are reading it or they will come back and bite you, causing you to flick back to see what he is talking about. Although that will not apply if you have time to read it quickly.
I'm not going to offer a story outline, as that's been done by the other reviewers quite well, but I will say that I liked the good characters and hated the bad ones, so to me they were well drawn and convincing. Bobby Zha is the sort of character I like, someone who doesn't dramatise what he does. If something needs doing, he does it. I like that.
A good read, recommended.

What to do when you are murdered...
9Tail Fox, put simply, is a supernatural crime drama. Though it deals with an aspect of fantasy/science fiction that has been touched upon before by various other mediums, the story is told very convincingly as you can really believe what is happening to the protagonist Bobby Zha.

The story is set over a period of five weeks, San Franciscan Sergeant Bobby Zha is a wildcard detective recognised for his unconventional yet successful methods, alienated from his wife and daughter and living a life that he doesn't much care about. When he is killed in a bloody attack he wakes up in the body of a coma patient.

The story follows Bobby Zha's efforts to establish what happened, who murdered him and most importantly why his murder has so quickly been forgotten and that all of his former colleagues now believe he was crooked. What unfolds is a story of fact gathering as he slowly pieces together the details of his murder and the events surrounding it, culminating in an energetic ending where all of the pieces of the puzzle finally come together.

As has been mentioned by another reviewer, I could not put the book down and have read it cover to cover in the space of a week. The writing style is very accessible and not to heavy, something that can always be a risk when mixing fantasy with crime. However I have not given 9Tail Fox the coveted five stars as I felt that the ending was rather too rapid to give the story its due.