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Aug. 24th, 2009 10:59 amTragedy strikes! I have now read all three of Laurence Yep's Tiger Lil mysteries, and as far as I am aware he has no plans to write any more. :(
To recap, the mystery series stars Lily, twelve-year-old sidekick to her Great-Aunt Lil, wisecracking Chinese-American movie-star action heroine and BEST DETECTIVE EVER, who has completely eclipsed all other detectives and all other badass old ladies in my heart!
The Case of the Lion Dance, the middle book, may be my favorite of all three books because it is the most full of wacky Indiana Jones-style hijinks. There is a BOMB that explodes at the opening of a Chinese restaurant (the owner's son has a dorky crush on Lily) and Lily and Lil must hunt down the culprits! They have to team up with a street tough who must help them find the bomber to clear his name and restore his honor! Occasionally they get held up by the fact that Aunt Lil does not actually know how to pick locks with a hairpin - "in the movies I always just kind of stuck it in the lock and wiggled, so I'm sure it will work now!" At one point they are almost maliciously run over by a RUNAWAY TRUCK! In a crowning moment of awesome, Great-Aunt Lil challenges a kung-fu master to SINGLE COMBAT and then uses the POWER OF HER MIND (and stage tricks learned from her time in the Taiwanese film industry) to defeat him! IT IS GLORIOUS.
The Case of the Firecrackers is almost as good, with the bonus that it involves wacky sibling bonding - Lily's older brother Chris becomes a suspect in an attempted murder case after getting into a fight with a teen star, and so he and his new girlfriend get to tag along on the investigation. Lily, who is totally old hat at this detecting business by now, is very dismissive of her brother's attempts to protect her - "I've got street smarts!" The one point that's more frustrating here than in the others is that occasionally Yep makes Lily a little too ignorant in order to get a chance to exposit (I find it hard to believe that anyone who grew up in San Francisco wouldn't know about the existence of Little Saigon); on the other hand, it's especially awesome for mockery of TV stereotypes, since a lot of the action takes place on the Fake Chinatown set of a TV show.
I am so sad that there will not be any more! But I guess I should not complain too much, because there are like five million Laurence Yep books I have not read, including the actual Newbery-award-winning ones. However, because I have tons of class, I feel that it is a higher priority for me to read Laurence Yep's Star Trek novel, Shadow Lord, which apparently revolves completely around Spock and Sulu swordfighting their way through a planet of 80's-haired rock stars. *_* Seriously, look at this cover! AMAZING.
To recap, the mystery series stars Lily, twelve-year-old sidekick to her Great-Aunt Lil, wisecracking Chinese-American movie-star action heroine and BEST DETECTIVE EVER, who has completely eclipsed all other detectives and all other badass old ladies in my heart!
The Case of the Lion Dance, the middle book, may be my favorite of all three books because it is the most full of wacky Indiana Jones-style hijinks. There is a BOMB that explodes at the opening of a Chinese restaurant (the owner's son has a dorky crush on Lily) and Lily and Lil must hunt down the culprits! They have to team up with a street tough who must help them find the bomber to clear his name and restore his honor! Occasionally they get held up by the fact that Aunt Lil does not actually know how to pick locks with a hairpin - "in the movies I always just kind of stuck it in the lock and wiggled, so I'm sure it will work now!" At one point they are almost maliciously run over by a RUNAWAY TRUCK! In a crowning moment of awesome, Great-Aunt Lil challenges a kung-fu master to SINGLE COMBAT and then uses the POWER OF HER MIND (and stage tricks learned from her time in the Taiwanese film industry) to defeat him! IT IS GLORIOUS.
The Case of the Firecrackers is almost as good, with the bonus that it involves wacky sibling bonding - Lily's older brother Chris becomes a suspect in an attempted murder case after getting into a fight with a teen star, and so he and his new girlfriend get to tag along on the investigation. Lily, who is totally old hat at this detecting business by now, is very dismissive of her brother's attempts to protect her - "I've got street smarts!" The one point that's more frustrating here than in the others is that occasionally Yep makes Lily a little too ignorant in order to get a chance to exposit (I find it hard to believe that anyone who grew up in San Francisco wouldn't know about the existence of Little Saigon); on the other hand, it's especially awesome for mockery of TV stereotypes, since a lot of the action takes place on the Fake Chinatown set of a TV show.
I am so sad that there will not be any more! But I guess I should not complain too much, because there are like five million Laurence Yep books I have not read, including the actual Newbery-award-winning ones. However, because I have tons of class, I feel that it is a higher priority for me to read Laurence Yep's Star Trek novel, Shadow Lord, which apparently revolves completely around Spock and Sulu swordfighting their way through a planet of 80's-haired rock stars. *_* Seriously, look at this cover! AMAZING.
