The second in Liz Williams Inspector Chen novels, The Demon and the City puts Seneschal Zhu Irzh front in stage in her near-future Singapore Three.
Truth be told, the cover and blurb is a bit deceiving. While Inspector Chen is a character in the novel, its arguable that he is the main character, especially since he spends most of the first half of the book off stage. The book's center is Senechal Zhu Irzh, vice agent from Chinese Hell turned into reluctant law enforcement agent in the near future Singapore Three. And he is not exactly enjoying his semi-exile, even if it gets him away from his relatives in Hell.
And when people start dying in Singapore Three, his investigations soon lead him into machinations not from Hell, but this time, from Heaven...
I did like the novel. However, I don't think the book is quite as strong as the first novel, Snake Agent,though. Not because Chen is offstage for much of the book; I liked Zhu as a viewpoint character. I think, though, that the book is a little less crisp than the first, a little less tightly focused. A few events happen off screen, and we are told about them, rather than shown them, and we get a couple of extraneous point of views that I don't think work quite as well as the main characters POV.
Also, the area between Heaven and Hell that we get to see is not quite as compelling and well drawn as the Hell we get to see in Snake Agent.
I do think I might be missing a level of structure to the book. After finishing it, I've realized that the book is divided into 64 chapters of varying lengths, and the sections of the book (eg, Hsiao Kuo, Ming I,) are the name of hexagrams.
Overall, though, its a pretty good although not great sequel to the first novel in the series (and I am pretty sure you don't want to read this one without reading the first). I will read the third...however I think I will wait for the paperback first.