Maclean's Magazine is running a feature on me and the Ava Lee series. 

There’s a commonality to the questions Ian Hamilton has faced as his series of thrillers featuring Ava Lee has grown ever more popular. There’s the question of brand mania: readers lose track of the number of times Lee mentions her addiction to Starbucks Via instant coffee. There’s the use of the word “rat” in the title of Hamilton’s first novel, The Water Rat of Wanchai, that apparently sends publishers around the bend. But nothing has popped up more often than some variant of the response he had from his wife, Lorraine, after he told her he was writing a story about a young, gay, Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant and martial arts expert who recovers money lost in financial scams: “They say you should write about what you know.” To which the 66-year-old grandfather of seven can only reply, “I was in the seafood business.”

That’s actually an appropriate response. Author and character may not share much personal resemblance, but the plot in Water Rat turns on a fraud involving Lee’s Hong Kong clients and $5 million worth of shrimp. When Lee sourly contemplates her new job—“of all the characters she had dealt with, the seafood guys were the worst; it was as if they were programmed to steal”—she’s speaking for Hamilton. And all the scams in the novels, including the fifth and newest, The Scottish Banker of Surabaya (out on Feb. 16), feature mostly Asian clients in mostly Asian locales.

For the entire feature, visit the article on Maclean's.