Slum Doctor, Mafia Man

Lin's split life gives the novel its strange moral pull. In the slum he treats fevers and infected wounds with almost no supplies and no medical training. For the mafia, he forges passports and runs guns.

Roberts never tries to square the two. He presents them as the contradictions of a complicated life in a city where tidy moral rules tend to fall apart. Is that honest insight, or a clever excuse? The book leaves that to you.