The Golden Gate is a highly entertaining page-turner that falls neatly into, but in some ways subverts, the classic murder mystery noir detective genre. As Detective Al Sullivan tries to solve the murder of aspiring politician Walter Wilkinson in 1940s San Francisco, he finds a web of connections. This web spans the global, represented by Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, the First Lady of the Republic of China, and the local, represented by Iris Stafford, a girl from one of the wealthiest families in the city, murdered a decade earlier. The scenes unfold as if on a TV screen, and one can imagine the sequels to be generated, with Detective Sullivan and his niece Miriam taking on new mysteries in each episode.

At the same time, it's far from formulaic. While Sullivan initially comes off as the stereotypically cynical and grizzled detective, we see greater complexity and sensitivity informed by ...