White Tiger: A Caleb & Thinnes Mystery

By Michael Allen Dymmoch

Book Overview

In Vietnam, white is the color of death. The 1997 murder of a Vietnamese woman in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood brings Dr. Jack Caleb and Detective John Thinnes together to catch another Vietnamese transplant--a deadly criminal known only as the White Tiger.

The TV news report of a woman's murder in Uptown leaves psychiatrist Jack Caleb flashing back to Vietnam and sends him running to his own shrink.

Assigned to investigate, Chicago detectives John Thinnes and Don Franchi find the victim's son, Tien Lee, curiously unmoved by his mother's death. Their preliminary canvass of the dead woman's building and neighborhood reveals that Hue An Lee was well liked and well off, and she had never quarreled with anyone but her "good son."

Attending the autopsy next morning, Thinnes realizes that he knew the victim when he was stationed in Vietnam--twenty-four years earlier. Thinnes is pulled off the case when an anonymous tipster alleges he'd been intimate enough with Mrs. Lee to have fathered her son. But Thinnes can't let go. And when a schizophrenic man shows up at Mrs. Lee's wake, connecting the deceased to another Vietnam vet and to an unsolved murder in wartime Saigon, Thinnes starts a retrospective investigation of that crime. He solicits Dr. Caleb's help. Tien Lee complicates the case by insisting that the paternity allegation is an insult to his dead mother. He tries to keep Thinnes on the case.

Dr. Caleb's therapy leads him to relive his own in Vietnam War experiences. When he's brought into the Lee case by a request to help the schizophrenic mourner, Caleb teams up with Thinnes and his partner to discover the identity of the White Tiger and to set a trap for the elusive killer.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1626819394
• ISBN13: 9781626819399
• Release Date: January 2015
• Publisher: Diversion Books
• Length: 326 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Dymmoch writing superbly, as one might expect.

Police Detective John Thinnes is stunned when he realizes that the middle-aged Vietnamese murder victim is someone he knows - the wife of his best friend in Viet Nam, a man named Bobby Lee. Her son, Tien Lee, who teaches Tae Kwan Do, identifies the woman. Thinnes is quite surprised to find out that Bobby Lee and Hue had a son, since Bobby Lee had, literally, gotten his balls shot off in the war. Someone wants Thinnes off the case; they claim that there is conflict of interest because Tien Lee is Thinnes's son. Tien Lee won't do the DNA test that would decide the issue once and for all. The whole case gives Thinnes a bad feeling; he's hard put to say whether it's because of the weather, which is as hot and humid as Viet Nam was, or because the case brings back unpleasant memories. Dr. Jack Caleb is dealing with his own demons and those of other vets in his group therapy sessions for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The case and his group eventually intersect, with Thinnes and Caleb helping each other. WHITE TIGER deals with Thinnes's ancient history as well as problems surfacing in his contemporary life. Dymmoch is a master at making those tenuous connections between then and now, at sketching in the tiny details that reveal the relationships and how they reach out to tweak today's world. WHITE TIGER is a masterful continuation of a series which just keeps getting better and better.

interesting thriller

Chicago Police Detective John Thinnes investigates the murder of a Vietnamese-American starting with interviewing the woman's son Tien Lee. At the morgue, John recognizes the naked victim having lived in her Saigon apartment for six months back in 1972; Hue Ann was the wife of his friend Bobby who apparently died five years ago. The brass pulls John off the case due to the obvious conflict of interest. An anonymous tipster claims John is Tien's biological father though the cop is certain that he never slept with his buddy's wife except maybe when he got drunk celebrating the marriage; that evening he remembers nothing else. Additionally Bobby was unable to sire a child. Adding to John's need to get involved is that the dangerously amoral former Saigon gang leader White Tiger has opened shop in Chicago allegedly seeking to avenge the homicide of a prostitute Jasmine back in `72 though the detective believes that is a Little Saigon cover for this thug's real deadly activities. Rotating perspectives between Thinnes and his friend psychiatrist Jack Caleb, who was also in country in 1972 enable readers to obtain a deep look at the horrors and aftermath of the Viet Nam War. Both vets try to forget what they saw and did, but vivid gruesome flashbacks do not allow one to escape their past. The murder of Hue and the word on the Little Saigon streets of the White Tiger preying on everyone add to John and Jack looking back especially the cop's need to know what happened the night Bobby married. The current police procedural never takes charge as it serves more as a window to a past everyone wants to forget, but cannot. Harriet Klausner