you can't hide your lion eyes

Lana Lee has a lot on her plate. She is the manager of her family’s restaurant, Ho-Lee Noodle House. She is dating a local police detective. And she’s helping to organize the Lunar New Year celebration for Asia Village. She’s helped to get the restaurants on board for the food and drinks, she’s set up the raffle and gotten donations for the prizes (including a generous donation from Ho-Lee Noodle House), and she’s hired the lion dancers for the entertainment.

The Chinese New Year celebration starts out a success, with everyone in Asia Village coming together to enjoy everything Lana had worked so hard to put together. There is plenty of food and drink, and then there are fireworks. But the lion dancers don’t get a chance to go on, as the woman who was supposed to be the head of the lion has been shot.

It was Lana’s friend Kimmy that introduced her to the dancers. Kimmy knew them from her second job, working as a server at the Black Garter, a gentleman’s club. Rhonda was a dancer there, trying to save up money to open her own dance studio with another woman who worked there. Rhonda has been dancing as the head of the lion for many years, working with her brother David, who ran the troupe. But his new fiancée had been wanting a chance to be the head of the lion, and he decided to give Angela a chance to do just that.

But after the fireworks, they find that someone used the noise to cover up their gunshots, and Rhonda is laying on the ground. Lana’s boyfriend Adam takes over, sending the guests away and making sure no one touches the crime scene. David is distraught, and Lana, no stranger to crime-solving, immediately finds her brain trying to put together all the pieces of the murder to make a complete picture.

David says that he and Rhonda had just had a fight, so Lana has to consider him a suspect. But since it was Angela who was originally supposed to be the head of the lion, Lana can’t be sure if she or Rhonda had been the target. Kimmy had seen a customer from the Black Garter who had seemed overly interested in Rhonda, and she’d been concerned. But she’d also seen David’s ex-girlfriend, who could have been upset that he was engaged to someone new already and aiming for Angela.

The next few days, as Lana has to clean up from the celebration, she also wants to figure out who was the target of the killer and why. And as she tries to find out who the killer is, she finds that the target is no longer on Rhonda or Angela. It’s turned in Lana’s direction, and she has to find out who is behind the murder or she might very well be next.

Peking Duck and Cover is the tenth book in Vivien Chien’s Noodle Shop Mystery series. These books combine family, Chinese food, and crime-solving. There is a lot of love (and a fair amount of arguing) as Lana tries to live her best life in Cleveland. She sometimes has to fight the cold, she has to take care of her dog Kikkoman, and she has to solve the murders, but she always tries to stay true to herself and look great. And she always gets her man.

I have been a big fan of this series for many years now, and Peking Duck and Cover does not disappoint. Chien has been dealing with some serious health issues over the last few years (see her social media for more info on that if you want the details), but she has kept her readers in mind and tried her best to keep giving us Ho-Lee adventures. I think some of her personal growth has been reflected in Lana’s maturity over these last few books, and I am loving that. It keeps these books from being one-note, which is a challenge in a series like this. I think Lana’s stories are just getting better, and I am already looking forward to the next one in the series.

Egalleys for Peking Duck and Cover were provided by Minotaur Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.