Jing-nan, owner of the most popular food stand in Taipei's world-famous night market, goes undercover to infiltrate an exploitative processed food factory and uncover the truth about a murdered undocumented immigrant in Ed Lin's big-hearted, eye-opening fifth installment in the fan-favorite Taipei Night Market series
Jing-nan is hauling the trash after a successful evening of hawking Taiwanese delicacies to tourists when he finds a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. The dead man turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who had come to Taiwan for a job at a massive ZHD food processing plant. The media immediately seizes on the story--one side bemoaning the plight of migrant workers, the other up in arms about the crime migrant workers are allegedly bringing into Taiwan--but no one seems to know who killed Juan Ramos or why he died.
Jing-nan is haunted by Ramos's story, and by the heartbreak of his family, who arrive in Taipei looking for answers. ZHD has a history of safety violations and activists have a hunch Ramos's death might be part of a cover-up. Meanwhile, Jing-nan's gangster uncle, Big Eye, has his own mysterious, probably illegal, reasons for being concerned about what's going on in ZHD. He pressures Jing-nan into a daring and risky mission: going undercover as a migrant laborer to get a job at the food processing plant and report back about the conditions inside. Jing-nan hopes to find out the truth for the Ramos family, and to save other immigrant lives--but first he has to survive the spy operation.
The Dead Can't Make a Living is at once a rollicking crime novel and a scorchingly timely examination of our global dependence on undocumented immigrant lives and the inhumane labor conditions that underpin our modern conveniences. Ed Lin is a journalist by training and an all-around stand-up kinda guy. He's the author of several books: in the Taipei Night Market series, Ghost Month, Incensed, 99 Ways to Die, and Death Doesn't Forget; his literary debut, Waylaid; and his Robert Chow crime series, set in 1970s Manhattan Chinatown: This Is a Bust, Snakes Can't Run, and One Red Bastard. Lin, who is of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards. Lin lives in New York with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung, and son.
