J.I. Jung

J.I. Jung is a New York City–based author writing historical noir, mystery, and hardboiled fiction. As a native New Yorker with a multi-ethnic background, he developed an early fascination with the city’s layered history—particularly the early twentieth century, when glamour and corruption, progress and exclusion, existed side by side.

 

His work is drawn to moments when American institutions reveal their fractures, from Prohibition-era crime to the long shadow of the Chinese Exclusion Act. His stories focus on characters who survive by keeping secrets—and the cost of maintaining them. His writing has been described as emotional without sentimentality, cynical without cruelty, and relentlessly propulsive.

 

His debut novel, Death Avenue, is set in late 1919 and follows Eddie Rum, a Chinese American man passing for white who becomes entangled in a murder investigation that threatens both his safety and his carefully constructed identity. 

 

Jung has also written and produced award-recognized plays, short fiction, and films.