{"id":4666,"date":"2025-10-02T16:30:59","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T16:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4666"},"modified":"2025-10-02T16:50:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T16:50:57","slug":"the-dead-cant-make-a-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=4666","title":{"rendered":"The Dead Can\u2019t Make a Living"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This fifth installment in the Taipei Night Market series is a heartfelt crime novel that reaches deep into the lives of a rich collection of characters, all of whom have some sort of relationship with young Jing-nan, the owner of the most successful food stand in the market. It starts off when Jing-nan is throwing out the garbage only to find a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. Who is this man? He turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who came to Taipei to work in ZHD, a vast, exploitative food-processing plant. Within days, Ramos\u2019s family arrives, seeking an explanation. Was his death a cover-up? Curiously, Jing-nan\u2019s gangster uncle, Big Eye, also becomes fascinated by what could be going down at ZHD. In one of the most compelling episodes in the series, Jing-nan goes to work at ZHD undercover, posing as a migrant laborer. <strong>Serious work, but Jing-nan brings along plenty of humor while still following the lives of undocumented immigrants and their living conditions.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This fifth installment in the Taipei Night Market series is a heartfelt crime novel that reaches deep into the lives of a rich collection of characters, all of whom have&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[206,64,55],"class_list":["post-4666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-asian-american-pacific-islander","tag-international","tag-mystery-detective"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Dead-1-382x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Dead-1.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}