Title: Obedience (#10 in the Dave Brandstetter series) Author: Joseph Hansen Published by: Mysterious Press, 1988 ISBN: [hardcover, 202 pages]
Andy Flanagan is an angry man. A one-armed veteran of the Vietnam war, he lives on a leaky boat at Los Angeles' Old Fleet Marina. Now the marina is to be sold, and Flanagan -- along with a hundred others -- is to be ousted, with no place to go.His protests ignored, he phones the marina's wealthy owner, an importer named Le Van Minh, and arranges a meeting. But Le Van Minh never shows -- that is, until Flanagan stumbles over his corpse on the dock and is arrested for murder.
Public Defender Tracy Davis thinks Flanagan is innocent, and hires Dave Brandstetter to find the real killer. Brandstetter soon finds himself on the unseen border where American and Asian cultures meet and clash. Other wealthy Vietnamese in L.A. have met violent ends lately. Le's youngest son, Ba -- a gentle poet -- died mysteriously only weeks before his father. Something shady is going on at Le's waterfront warehouse. What role does the Vietnamese gang lord Don Pham play? What did a black street mime see that he shouldn't? What angry secret do the young people of Le's family share between them?
Obedience is a story of ancient verities trashed by 20th-century greed and corruption. Never before has Dave Brandstetter ventured into so alien a world, and rarely has his dogged search for the truth put his life in such danger.
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