Ava Lee (International Order)

In The Wild Beasts of Wuhan, Uncle and Ava are summoned by Wong Changxing, "The Emperor of Hubei" and one of the most powerful men in China, when he discovers that the Fauvist paintings he recently acquired are in fact forgeries.

Ava uncovers a ring of fraudulent art dealers and follows their twisted trail to Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Dublin, London, and New York. But the job is further complicated by Wong's second wife, the cunning and seductive May Ling, who threatens to interfere in Ava's inestigation.

Ava is in Shanghai for the launch of the PÖ clothing line. She has invited Xu, and over the course of the glitzy event and a late-night dinner, she detects a certain hesitancy in him. He confides that the Tsai family, headed by Tsai Lian, the governor of Jiangsu Province and a “princeling” - he is the son of a general who was on the Long March with Mao and a member of China’s power elite - is trying to force him and his Triad organization back into the drug business.

Ava attends London Fashion Week for the launch of the PÖ fashion line, one of the major investments she and her partners in the Three Sisters - May Ling Wong and Amanda Yee - have made during the last year. With the exponential expansion of the luxury-brand market in China, Ava and her partners are determined to see a young Chinese designer break out in Europe and North America, and they go full out in London. The show is a success, but perhaps too much of one. It attracts the attention of Dominic Ventola, the principal partner in the luxury fashion conglomerate VLG.

Ava has spent two nights luxuriating in a hotel in Yunnan Province with the actress Pang Fai, with whom she has begun a secret relationship. She receives an urgent phone call from Chang Wang, the right hand to the billionaire Tommy Ordonez and one of Uncle’s oldest friends. Years ago, Ava and Uncle helped Tommy recover $50 million in a land swindle. Chang asks Ava to fly to Manila to meet with his friend, Senator Miguel Ramirez. Ramirez asks Ava to investigate a college in Tawi-Tawi, an island province in the Philippines, that he suspects is training terrorists.