It is no coincidence that, besides having Eurasian female authors, both of these books feature female detectives with lawyer mates. The similarities end there, as one is set in China and the other in Japan and California.
In an essay in "Half Half (Writers on Growing up Biracial + Bicultural)" Lisa See used the occasion of her grandmother's funeral to "discuss her memories of growing up in a Chinese-American family and what it means to feel Chinese when you have red hair and freckles."
Ethnic diversity, I was pleased to see, makes for a good tale. Her protagonist here is a beautiful female Chinese cop, Liu Hulan, an inspector in the Ministry of Public Security. Liu is married to American lawyer David Stark. This somewhat unlikely husband and wife team addresses any number of practical considerations -- which should appeal to readers not fully satisfied with a basic whodunit and insist that the narrative also let them peer into the private lives of crime solvers.