Short Story Review: “Detective Dog” by Gish Jen

(The short story “Detective Dog” by Gish Jen was featured in the November 22^nd, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

I don’t like characters in a story who are wealthy. Not that I have anything against a real person being rich, but in fiction, I think it’s a cop-out when an author makes a protagonist’s wealthy. A wealthy character can travel anywhere, do anything, and can be carefree and selfish. Fewer complications means less conflict, and stories need conflict.

So, when “Detective Dog,” by Gish Jen opens with the line, “No politics, just make money,” and then we find out that Betty, our protagonist, did just that, and made lots of money, my defenses went up. The story is about a Chinese family from Hong Kong, that was living in Vancouver, then moves to New York, and proceeds to buy two more apartments in the building their living in to have more room. Betty is married to Quinten, and they have a seventeen-year-old son Theo, and a nine-year-old adopted son Robert. This family left Vancouver due to racism there, and settle in New York as the pandemic starts. Theo keeps talking about the Hong Kong protests against the Chinese Communist government, and wishes he were there, taking part in the demonstrations. Then we learn that Betty’s uncle is asked by Betty’s sister, Bobby, to smuggle out a letter to Betty, but the uncle destroys the letter, fearing the Communists will discover the letter and jail him. The story takes a turn where Theo wins a large amount of money gambling online, buys a car, and then leaves, not informing his family where he is going. Then Robert gets an extra credit assignment to come up with a mystery, and Betty tells Robert a secret about their family, and I’ll leave it at that; no spoilers.

There is a lot going on here, which is not a problem, but I feel I’m giving the impression that this is a complicated story. It’s not. It has a very easy flow to it, and the spartan use of details is actually pretty impressive. This is a story that is pared down to the most essential details, and it didn’t feel that a single word or sentence is wasted. But, overall, that story still felt uneven to me. I enjoyed how the story was written, and I couldn’t predict where the plot was taking me, which felt good. And when the end of the story arises, it completely body checked my preconceived notions about telling a story of a wealthy family, and why a person would choose to be wealthy as a goal for their family. What made it uneven to me was Theo’s leaving the family. I get that it was meant to be a parallel in the story structure, but, and this one is big, Betty didn’t seem to be upset about it. Yes, one or two lines was thrown in of Betty or Robert wondering where Theo was, but I found it unrealistic that a mother, in the middle of the Covid Pandemic, would just let her seventeen-year-old son leave, and not try to get him home by calling him, texting his friends, or something. It felt like Theo needed leave so Betty’s final story would have more weight, rather than thinking through what a mother would do if her son ran away. It was a choice that the author made that I had a hard time getting past, which is too bad, as the ending was well worth the read.