S. F. Baumgartner. Living Secrets. F.B. Publishing, 2023.
The author of Living Secrets seems to like people whose background becomes a surprise even to themselves. The two main characters of the novel both have learned that their parents are not who they thought they were. Dylan Roche of Florida discovers that he is the heir to a fortune that apparently was largely funded from the rackets. Lily Tso of Hong Kong learns that her birth parents, whom she had never met, were an international spy known as Phoenix and a man who is now a U. S. Senator.
Twenty-two year old Lily has a documents job in a Hong Kong hotel that is partly owned by Dylan’s family. Through Dylan she meets some people who want her to take some classified information from China to the United States. They tell her that she may finally meet her birth mother, someone she and the uncle who raised her thought was dead. To paraphrase Homer, that was the beginning of all her troubles.
Lily arrives with Dylan to Florida where they meet with some FBI agents including a father-son team. They make arrangements to meet both of Lily’s parents, but things do not go according to plan. There are so many people tailing other people it is almost hard to keep track of them. And it is certainly difficult to tell who the good guys are—if there are any. After all, Dylan has an aunt who is still with the criminal organization, and Lily’s mother has been operating as a spy for years. Whom is Phoenix spying for?
A criminal known as the Ghost seems to pulling the strings behind everything. We learn that Phoenix and Ghost know each other, too. There are also some Chinese spies and tong members. It gets complicated and interesting. The chapters are short, the action does not let up, and readers will be compelled to keep reading.
Oh, yeah, there is some kind of germ warfare going on as well. A deadly microbe originated in China, but some Chinese doctors have risked their own lives and reputations to try to get word of an antidote before it creates havoc in places that China considers rivals if not enemies. Hong Kong was where East and West met for a century. Are East and West still compatible there? Anywhere?