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<p style="text-align:justify">The &ldquo;tender business&rdquo; of the title addresses an unseen need of society: professionals who can see the deceased beyond that final mile on the road of life. The stories in this book are strung together out of grisly images of corpses, the laments of the author as he handles post-mortem cleaning, and his speculations about the lives of the deceased as he sorts through their material possessions.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align:justify">The author has transmuted his criticisms and concerns for society into practical action. Through observations taken from his unique perspective working on behalf of those who die impoverished and lonely deaths, readers can feel the proximity of the bodies entrusted to the author&rsquo;s care, and partake of his professional insights into the tribulations of those who pass their final years penniless and alone. The book is like a prism, reflecting a &ldquo;connectionless&rdquo; contemporary society in which we are gradually losing contact with family, the land, and community. At the same, light is shone on the areas of society to which the social safety net has not yet been extended.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p>In strikingly vivid prose, the author makes a strong case that the end of an individual existence, and the conditions under which it takes place, should be a concern for all of society.</p>

<p style="text-align:justify">Taking on the extreme subject of life and death, the novel explores the contradictions of human nature and the multitude of forms that life can take. When given seven days to live, the characters don&rsquo;t run around ticking items off their bucket lists as we see in the familiar &ldquo;terminal diagnosis&rdquo; novel; instead, they are given seven days to go and truly experience the warmth that life has to offer.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align:justify"><em>Mr. Death&rsquo;s Suicide Pact </em>is a pure distillation of life in all its kindness and cruelty. Each story will leave readers with bittersweet, even tearful, resonances to savor.</p>

<p style="text-align:justify">It&rsquo;s impossible not to admire the exhaustive field research that went into this novel, bringing readers into a world they would ordinarily never encounter: a police academy populated with characters and scenes so vivid they practically leap from the page. With this fictional narrative, the author questions the hard and fast rules of seniority that govern student life, the authoritarian style of education, and the faculty power struggles taking place within the academy. While the story is fictional, readers will feel compelled to take it seriously, as if the conflicts described in the novel were taking place in their own lives.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align:justify">To put it succinctly, <em>Number 70, Your Badge </em><em>I</em><em>s Crooked </em>is a light read that deals with heavy issues &ndash; a book that, for all of its youthful brio, demands serious thought.</p>

<p style="text-align:justify"><a name="_Hlk191482987">Stories about conflict in the South China Sea often involve a face off with China over Taiwan&rsquo;s Taiping Island, but <em>16 Hours on Taiping Island</em> has broken the formula with a coup in the Philippines leading to its entry into a proxy war with Taiwan, a convoluted scenario that highlights the complexity of security concerns in the region. It is also a reminder to policy-makers that they need to think outside of the box when approaching these issues.</a></p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align:justify">Three men &ndash; a hero with a background in special forces, a Coast Guard slacker who has been around the block a few too many times, and an ecologist stationed on the island &ndash; get tangled up in the deadly struggle against the invading mercenaries. The story delivers plenty of heroic derring-do, and its &ldquo;live together, die together&rdquo; ethos hits the mark. The distinctive character of Taiwan&rsquo;s military culture is also on display, providing humor and a sense of familiarity.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p style="text-align:justify">It&rsquo;s an effortlessly smooth read, and like a movie, you hardly know when to breathe once the action kicks in. There&rsquo;s a sniper scene that compares favorably to <a name="_Hlk186709773"><em>Enemy at the Gates</em></a><em>, </em>and the dialogue during the naval battles will have readers in mind of <em>The Hunt for Red October.</em></p>

<p style="text-align:justify">The author excels at packaging heartache with humor in this cinematic and fast-paced narrative spanning a broad range of modern dilemmas: divorce, dealing with the in-laws, and the secret to how your personality quirks just might make you kill someone. The cast of characters is a realistic portrayal of contemporary Taiwanese society: the housewife who abandoned her career for her marriage, the intellectually and expressively precocious children, and the primary school cliques that form based on whether kids come from dual or single parent households.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p>A menagerie of animal imagery provides rich material for metaphors, while the human characters drift between home, office, storage unit, and other locales, as if searching for some place to finally settle down when even private spaces seem to force one into various relationships with others, and with society. As the protagonist attempts to get to the core of the mystery, layer after layer of obscurations are peeled away, testing her ability to face up to the fact that the man she loved never revealed what he was really thinking, and now, he never will.</p>

<p style="text-align:justify">In the novel, sex nearly always occurs in moments devoid of love, save for a faint glimmer of &ldquo;redemptive love&rdquo; seen in a slim minority of cases. The characters are either receptacles of physical desire, or are deprived of sexual autonomy. In either case, all of the cruelty and grief they suffer takes shape in one form: loneliness.</p> <p style="text-align:justify">&nbsp;</p> <p>Kevin Chen&rsquo;s novel allowed me to once again glimpse something in the distance: that each of us in our process of growing up has on some level endured and repressed the desire to scream out loud, and buried it deep beneath the memories of our pain. We think we&rsquo;ve passed through it and thus, we are healed. We believe the dust has settled over the past and we slowly forget. We think the blood no longer flows from the wound, so we must be fine. Thus, the pain becomes a distant place within ourselves, the spiritual distance towards which we must journey.</p>