Product Description

'THIS MAN HAVE COME FROM CHINA TO FIND HIS DAUGHTER WHO HAVE SOME TROUBLE. HE DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH'Inspector Jian is a Chinese cop from the Siberian border who thinks he's seen it all. But his search for his missing daughter brings him to the meanest streets he's ever faced – in rural England. Migrant worker East Wind is distressed – his gangmaster's making demands, he owes a lot of money to the snakeheads and no one will tell him where his wife has been taken. Maybe England isn't the 'gold mountain' he was promised... Two desperate men, uneasy allies in a baffling foreign land, are pitted against a band of ruthless criminals... there's BAD TRAFFIC ahead.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37146 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Sharon Wheeler, Reviewing the Evidence (crime blog)
One of my outstanding books of 2008 - Lewis's BAD TRAFFIC is an absolutely exceptional novel which had me mesmerised.

Waterstones Books Quarterly. No 69
A smart-paced, thoroughly entertaining crime-thriller, laced with black humour.

Marcel Berlins, The Sunday Times
An impressive novel set in a milieu hitherto unused in crime fiction.

Customer Reviews

Unusual, gripping and at times very funny.
Bravo to Lewis for combining a unique and exciting thriller with the brutal and topical issue of people trafficking. His delightfully venal anti-hero and guileless side kick find themselves pitched against both convincing and vicious murderers but also the background of a Britain made utterly alien and sinister by being seen through the eyes of the protagonist: a non English speaking Chinese detective,seeking a missing daughter on his first time out of his own country. Memorable.

Bad Traffic - A review
This is an excellent thriller: fast-paced, gripping and dark. The idea of a Chinese detective looking for his missing daughter in rural England works surprisingly well. We look at England and ourselves from a Chinese man's eyes and the result is funny, moving and sombre. Read it!

Intense, Very Intense
Ma Jian is an inspector for the Chinese State Police. He's a tough, no nonsense, cynical kind of cop. He's corrupt and he's used to bending the rules to get what he wants and what he wants is to find the men who kidnapped his daughter Wei Wei. She calls him while he's with his mistress, pleads for help and the line goes dead. When he can't get her back on the line, he flies to Leeds, England, where she's attending university.

However, he doesn't speak a word of the white devil's language and to further add to his problems, he gets mugged shortly after arrival. So now, in addition to not being able to communicate, he has no money or identification. At the university he resorts to shouting, but nobody understands. He gets some help from Wei Wei's flatmate and learns that she'd dropped out of school and was working as a waitress in a Chinese restaurant. It was while working at the restaruant that Wei Wei met the Chinese criminal named Black Forte. He asks her out and she becomes his girlfriend, then she's gone. Jian believe Black Forte has murdered Wei Wei and he sets out to get revenge.

But he still has that language problem so when he meets Ding Ming, a Chinese illegal, who speaks English, he enlists his aid, quite against the man's will I might add. Ding Ming is in search of his wife, also an illegal, who has been taken by Black Forte. Unknown to Ding Ming, she's going to be forced into a life of prostitution.

Both men want the same thing, to find Black Forte, but for different reasons and they don't trust each other. Plus they have no money, no way to find him and no transportation, so they start off on their own crime spree, stealing cash and cars on their way to an explosive ending that promises more books about these two men.

This is a very fast read and very entertaining read. Both Ma Jian and Ding Ming come across as real people. The gangster Black Forte is truly despicable and Jian's daughter and Ding Ming's wife are truly damsels in distress. Thrillerwise, this book has it all.