The King Macau

"Jack Shepherd is a delight, a sharp-witted lawyer with a drive for justice forced to reside in a world of hard men who don't believe in the rule of law. Jake Needham is a man who knows Asia like the back of his hand." - The Malaysia Star

"Jake Needham is Asia's most stylish and atmospheric writer of crime fiction."- The Singapore Straits Times

Jack Shepherd is a lawyer, but he doesn't much like to admit it. He's fled the acrid life of Washington and now he works by himself in Hong Kong. He no longer lobbies government agencies, negotiates for corporations, or shows up in court. From his little unmarked office on Hollywood Road, he works quietly to solve the problems his big-money clients don't want anyone else to know they have.

One of the world's largest casino operators discovers a massive money-laundering scheme at its casino in Macau and they go to Jack Shepherd to get it stopped. Macau is a tiny place on the south coast of China close to Hong Kong that is the biggest gambling center on earth. It is also a stronghold of Chinese organized crime, which makes it a dicey place for a white guy to go around asking questions.

Shepherd is in Macau ducking Chinese gangsters and searching for the source of the black money swamping the casinos when he is sucked into another bizarre caper. A man who knows the most secret schemes of the North Korean government has found out Shepherd still has high-level connections in Washington. He wants Shepherd to slip him out of Macau and get him political asylum in America, maybe with a nice beach house in Hawaii thrown in for good measure.

And just like that Shepherd is tumbling headlong through this modern-day Casablanca on the South China Sea, a bubbling caldron of gunrunners, money launderers, hustlers, gangsters, gamblers, con men, and spies. He must join forces with the daughter of a shadowy old man everybody calls the King of Macau to stay ahead of the Chinese gangsters and shut down the black money flow. But, at the same time, he battles a gaggle of North Korean hit men to try and bring his defector in alive.

Move too fast, and he'll lose control of everything. Move too slow... and Macau just might kill him.


Genre: Mystery