Asian-American private investigator Lydia Chin knows New York City's Chinatown, its people, and its ways as no outsider ever could. So when the Chinatown Museum is robbed of a set of rare export porcelains, Lydia is hired to recover them quietly - a task that quickly proves more difficult than it at first appears. Maneuvering gently around the local gangs who control the streets of Chinatown, Lydia tackles an investigation that takes her - and her sometimes partner Bill Smith - far beyond the borders of Chinatown into the equally cryptic world of art and collecting, and upstart outer-borough gangs trying to gain a toe hold in the closed world of Chinatown.