Arcadia Public Library

Investigating a rumor about new paintings by a famous contemporary Chinese artist who has been dead for twenty years, private investigator Lydia Chin and her partner, Bill Smith, discover that a new client is not who he claims to be.

"The Most Southern Place on Earth: that's what they call the Mississippi Delta. It's not a place Lydia Chin, an American-born Chinese private detective from Chinatown, NYC, ever thought she'd have reason to go. But when her mother tells her a cousin Lydia didn't know she had is in jail in Clarksdale, Mississippi - and that Lydia has to rush down south and get him out - Lydia finds herself rolling down Highway 61 with Bill Smith, her partner, behind...

As she investigates four missing waiters in New York's Chinatown, PI Lydia Chin stumbles on a racket involving the smuggling of illegal immigrants. She also finds evidence of the smuggling of dissidents out of China on behalf of the U.S. government.

PIs Bill Smith and Lydia Chin go undercover to investigate suspicious deaths on a construction site in New York City, including those of a crane operator and a cement mixer. Smith is posing as a mason, Lydia as a secretary in the trailer.