Douglas Wynne knows how to craft a captivating tale. The Wind In My Heart–while taking place in the 1990s–hearkens back to the hard-boiled detective stories of authors like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. For being a couple of generations removed from the anti-hero protagonists of those books, Miles Landry wouldn’t be out of place at all. Of course, it helps the aesthetic that this takes place in New York’s Chinatown.
Blending this combination of an old school detective noir with Eastern philosophy–in the Tibetan crisis-conscious New York of the early 1990s–creates an enchanting sort of mandala in literary form. Threads of the story circle back around, creating new patterns and surprising twists as the narrative takes shape and arrives at a final form…before being swept away like sand as you reach the conclusion and set the book aside.
Hired by the monks of a Buddhist community center to investigate what they believe to be a supernaturally perpetrated series of murders, Landry must traverse a dangerous gauntlet between Chinese gangs, the police, and a possible supernatural threat that stands to tear his world apart.
Unlike altogether too many books, there was an unexpected twist to this story…but not one that felt flimsy or poorly crafted. Nothing about Wynne’s book was poorly crafted.