I liked the contemporary setting featuring human trafficking in illegals.  The cultural divide was represented very realistically, and rather sympathetically. The protagonist was  very flawed but likeable in his humanity, and you find yourself reluctantly empathizing with him and his situation. I'm not sure if the conditions described would really be true of present day China and the UK.  I'm a little bit leery of these skewed representations of how bad things are in other countries, but I loved that they made this totally corrupt inspector so smart as well.  The mystery aspect was well written in how Inspector Jian unravels information though you sort of know how things are going to tie in together -- and you like the characters enough that you want to read thro to the last page.