I’m a private investigator, and in this work, each case is different. Also, I have a big family: four brothers, two with wives and kids; my Ma; and cousins all over the place. Plus a partner, Bill Smith, with a habit of calling me at all hours to bring me in on a job — or invite me out to dinner. So really, I have no such thing as a typical day. But here’s one made from bits and pieces.

I love morning. I live in Chinatown, NYC, in the apartment my brothers and I grew up in. They pay the rent, and I keep an eye on our Ma, who thinks she’s keeping an eye on me. Chinatown during the day is crowded and buzzing, but in the early hours the air is fresh. The vegetable and fish sellers are just opening up and the street vendors are pushing their carts into place. I trot down the four flights and head for the dojo, to get in a workout before everyone else’s day begins.

By the time I come out again, the action has started. Shoppers, suits, traffic, open storefronts, sirens, kids screeching and laughing on their way to school. I’ve grabbed Ma’s shopping list on the way out the door, and I buy the heavy stuff: dish detergent, five-pound bags of rice. She likes to pick out the fruit and vegetables herself, and arguing with Old Li at his fish store is one of her joys in life. Back home I shower, grab a cup of tea with her and listen to her scold me for not eating breakfast, then head back out, to my office. It’s a room at the back of a travel agency on Canal Street. That way if anyone spots a client at the door he can always save face by claiming he was looking for a cheap flight to Guangdong, not for someone to tail his cheating wife. If I have no clients I do paperwork until I can’t stand it anymore, until it’s time to get to an appointment, or until Bill calls, whichever comes first. Or I get ready for an interview.

A lot of the work PI’s do involves talking to people. You can do it on the phone, but it’s always better to be there with a subject, to see their eyes, their body language. In the office I check databases, get what I can — these days, that can be a good deal — but in the end I spend a fair amount of time going from place to place for an interview. That’s subway time, bus time, walking time. I enjoy it, seeing people’s clothes, their faces, what the different neighborhoods look like, smell like, what I can pick up to eat. I’m a big fan of street food and in New York something delicious is always on the cart around the corner. Which is one of the reasons I rarely eat breakfast at home.

Then there’s undercover work. The PI goes in with a “gag,” PI-speak for fake identity. I’ve been a rich Hong Kong lady, a dim-sum-cart pusher, a gum-chewing college student, a bored heiress. This work especially, and most of PI work in general, is better done in pairs. The subject’s attention will be on one of you and the other can study the subject. Bill’s great at impersonations, and when we do this we throw each other curves every now and then just to stay sharp.

I warn Ma whenever I won’t be home for dinner; otherwise, I eat with her so she knows I’m eating a good meal — which she’s sure I won’t know how to do on my own — and so she can give me advice. After dinner I might stay home, reading or watching TV, or I’ll go out with friends, or I’ll go over to Bill’s. At which point I will now draw the curtain on this Day In The Life.

You can read more about Lydia in Paper Son, the 12th book in the “Lydia Chin/Bill Smith” private investigator mystery series, released July 2, 2019.

The latest Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery takes the acclaimed detective duo into the Deep South to investigate a murder within the Chinese community.

The Most Southern Place on Earth: that’s what they call the Mississippi Delta. It’s not a place Lydia Chin, an American-born Chinese private detective from Chinatown, NYC, ever thought she’d have reason to go. But when her mother tells her a cousin Lydia didn’t know she had is in jail in Clarksdale, Mississippi―and that Lydia has to rush down south and get him out―Lydia finds herself rolling down Highway 61 with Bill Smith, her partner, behind the wheel.

From the river levees to the refinement of Oxford, from old cotton gins to new computer scams, Lydia soon finds that nothing in Mississippi is as she expected it to be. Including her cousin’s legal troubles―or possibly even his innocence. Can she uncover the truth in a place more foreign to her than any she’s ever seen?

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Meet the author
SJ Rozan is the author of sixteen novels and 70+ short stories. She’s won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Macavity, Nero, and Japanese Maltese Falcon Awards. SJ was born in the Bronx and lives in Manhattan. Her new novel is Paper Son.

To learn more about SJ, visit her website at sjrozan.net.

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