“Yeah,” I said, wondering what Nelli sensed about Lopez’s new partner that alarmed her so. “We do need to go find Max.”
Author’s Note
Tiger
People born in the Year of the Tiger, as I was, are said to be courageous, honest, lucky, rebellious, arrogant, unpredictable, and resilient. I can live with that description.
The idea for Lily Yee’s store came from a shop that I entered just to get out of the rain when visiting Vancouver’s Chinatown several years ago. Much like the shop in this novel, it was a small, generic storefront that blossomed into an extensive maze of rooms full of wonders and oddities. My enchantment with that place led me to start thinking about a story that would take Esther Diamond to New York’s Chinatown.
The idea for the misfortune cookies was the result of editor Betsy Wollheim mercilessly rejecting one mediocre title after another for Esther’s Chinatown adventure, until I came up with The Misfortune Cookie. Initially relieved that She Who Must Be Obeyed had finally approved a title for the book . . . I then realized I needed to come up with a plot for it. (It’s always something.)
In researching this book, I paid multiple visits to New York’s Chinatown (and I took Betsy along with me for several hours on a particularly frigid day, so I got my revenge). Following the lion dancers around was probably the most fun I had, out of many wonderful experiences there. Some of the most informative hours I spent in Chinatown were with Susan Rosenbaum, the Enthusiastic Gourmet, who offers fascinating food tours of the neighborhood. But tasting dried cuttlefish is not an experience I ever intend to repeat.
For readers interested in delving further into Chinatown, some of my most enjoyable background reading included: Jennifer 8. Lee’s engaging The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food; Patrick Radden Keefe’s The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream, which I found unputdownable; and the beautifully photographed Chinatown, New York: Portraits, Recipes, and Memories by Ann Volkwein and Vegar Abelsnes.
My thanks to Dan Dos Santos, the brilliant artist for the Esther Diamond series, who has raised the bar still higher with this dynamite cover. Thanks also to the tremendous co-publishers at DAW Books, Sheila Gilbert and Betsy Wollheim, to managing editor Joshua Starr (who puts up with a lot), and to the rest of the wonderful team at DAW Books.
Finally, I must emphasize that this book is a work of fiction and does not seriously seek to question, challenge, or undermine the inherent and indisputable goodness of all cookies everywhere. Indeed, throughout the writing of The Misfortune Cookie, I relied heavily, as I so often do, on the Elizabeth Bevarly Theory of Plotting (Liz is a prolific novelist and a friend of mine): There is no plot problem that cookies cannot solve.
Anyhow, I hope you’ve enjoyed The Misfortune Cookie so much that you immediately succumb to an uncontrollable impulse to go eat in a Chinese restaurant. Which is probably where Esther Diamond will be until she, her friends, and her nemeses return for their next misadventure—which book title will be announced on my website after I come up with one that She Who Must Be Obeyed approves . . .
—Laura Resnick
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The Misfortune Cookie ed-6 Page 28
