The Dead Can't Make a Living (A Taipei Night Market Novel) by Ed Lin (Hardcover)

Fiction - Mystery & Detective - International Crime & Mystery - Crime - Asian American & Pacific Islander 

RELEASE DATE: 4/7/2026  (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

“A unique blend of tension, charm, tragedy, and optimism, with characters you’ll love and a setting so real you’ll think you’ve been there. Highly recommended.”—Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series

Ed Lin's big-hearted, eye-opening fifth installment in the fan-favorite Taipei Night Market series

Jing-nan, the owner of the most popular food stand in Taipei’s world-famous Shilin night market, is hauling 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 came to Taiwan for a job at a massive ZHD food processing plant.

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, Jingnan’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 reporting 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.

This rollicking crime novel is a scorching, timely examination of our global dependence on undocumented immigrants.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Ed Lin is a journalist by training and an all-around stand-up kinda guy. He's the author of four other novels in the Taipei Night Market series: Ghost Month, Incensed, 99 Ways to Die, and Death Doesn't Forget as well as five other novels. Lin, who is of Chinese and Taiwanese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards. He lives in New York with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung, and son.

"A refreshing multinationalism continues to run through the series, which folds Taiwanese, Vietnamese, Australian, Chinese, and Filipino characters into the action. Cheeky humor and a team of investigators you'll want to hang with."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Lin seamlessly weaves complex details about Taiwanese history and political tensions into the action, paying special attention to social and financial abuses perpetrated against undocumented workers . . . This entertains."
--Publishers Weekly

"Good guy Jing-nan delivers a clear-eyed, compassionate portrayal of overseas worker abuse in this gritty offering to the rising swell of cozy-adjacent crime fiction. This fifth adventure is another series bar-raiser, delivering well-crafted underworld adventures with humor and sensual immersion in everyday Taipei."
--Booklist

"Hilarious and dangerous . . . the two qualities that propel first-tier suspense novels."
--BookPage

"This series is lots of fun, with an ebullient protagonist and a cast of entertaining recurring characters . . . Ed Lin addresses serious topics with a light touch. Like many societies, Taiwan relies on cheap foreign labor yet looks down on those who fill those jobs. American readers are likely to see parallels with our own country, though the author doesn't hammer home a message."
--Crime Fiction Review