I really like Lisa Brackmann's Ellie McEnroe character. Mostly because of what she's not- she isn't a spy, assassin, ninja, martial arts expert, beauty queen, or female Reacher. What she is, though (war vet with a damaged leg, expat in China, speaker of Chinese, beer drinker, supporter of various Chinese characters who get themselves in hot water with authorities), keeps her in enough trouble to make Brackmann's novels interesting.

Dragon Day is pretty good. Brackmann isn't a great writer but her style is a match for her main character- sort of blue-collar, nothing fancy. The plot is decent: Ellie is asked to do a seemingly easy task for a powerful Chinese man to whom she owes a favor, and with that the story if off and running. There are gangsters involved along with several varieties of Chinese police, murders, dissident activity, romantic entanglements that often don't seem very romantic, and lots of danger. China seems like a really complicated place to just travel to and walk around in, much less if there are crimes and investigations involved. I have to admit that I needed to page backwards in the book a few times to make sure I understood which characters were which.

All in all, the conclusion was fine in that Ellie survived and is still in China, so she's ready, I assume, to get herself back in trouble. Dragon Day is a nice addition to the series and well worth a read. ( )

The third and final Ellie McEnroe story in which the veteran of a confused and pointless war tries to find her feet in a confused and confusing China. Her cheerful, scary billionaire acquaintance, Sidney Cao, has a job for her. He wants her to find out what's going on with his three kids (the one child policy is optional for the powerful) and in particular whether the American adventurer who's hanging out with his youngest son is bad news. Readers of this trilogy will guess fairly soon: they're all bad news. It doesn't help that her semi-boyfriend John (aka Creepy John), who works for security services wants to be helpful (or does he?), that her activist artist friend plans to return to Beijing, where he's certain to attract the attention of authorities who have been looking for him, and her supply of Percocet is running low. When the body of a woman who had been at a party held by one of Sidney's wayward kids turns up in a dump, things get really complicated.

There are two strengths in this trilogy.One is the fascinating picture it provides of the New China - a place that's aggressively under construction and chaotic after a seismic cultural shift toward consumerism. The other is Ellie's voice - casual, unsettled, constantly searching for something she can't identify, faced at every turn with a need to figure out the least bad of terrible options. She's a fascinating woman and a nifty guide to a place that has changed beyond recognition.