Painkillers

A taut thriller set in the dog days of colonialism and the 20th century, from a renowned writer of literary science fictionIn a story that shoots back and forth between a glamorous 1990 Hong Kong and a straitened 1998 London, Adam Wyatt and his wife Eva run a small café near Southwark Market. They bicker a lot, Adam drinks, and visits to their autistic son Justin tend to go awry. But underneath Adam's drinking are secrets from their previous life in Hong Kong, when he worked for the Independent Commission Against Corruption and got in with some very dubious local society types; one of whom includes "Call me Jimmy" Yao Sau-Lan, "a big nasty man, in a big nasty suit," whose father just happened to kill Eva's grandfather. When Jimmy's widow and sons come calling, Adam knows she's in trouble.