"Wine is the latest in an unbroken line of popular private eyes-molded by Dashiell Hammett in the '20s, psychoanalyzed by Ross Macdonald in the '50s and '60s and now dragged kicking and screaming into a new decade's cultural crunch."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes out not to be what they meant, other men have to fight for what they meant under another name."
-William Morris
"A fun detective novel you just don't get enough of anymore...there is a certain style reminiscent of those 1950s Mickey Spillane novels when men were men and private investigators were 'private dicks'...definitely recommended reading."
-West Coast Review of Books
With a new introduction by Roger L. Simon
A guided tour of the People's Republic, Aunt Sonya had said: U.S.-China Friendship Study Tour Number Five, arranged by the China Friendship Society, an organization in which she was involved. Why not get away from it all? Moses Wine figured. At least it would get him away from personal injury cases, murder investigations, and the insistent feeling that boredom and alienation were about to become his constant companions in his middle age. But China has a way of springing surprises, and soon California's hippest ex-radical detective is chasing down the priceless Han Dynasty Peking Duck, falling for a gorgeous dragon lady in a Mao suit-and fighting for his life across a vast, mysterious land he barely knows...
Ever restless, ROGER L. SIMON has spent his life moving between books and movies, gaining distinction in both. In books, he is best known for the seven Moses Wine detective novels, which have won prizes in the U.S. and Great Britain and been published in over a dozen languages. In film, most prominent among his six produced screenplays-including his adaptation of The Big Fix-is Enemies, A Love Story, for which Simon was nominated for an Academy Award.