by Rina Ayuyang
Deemed “one of the finest modern works of noir” (Jeff Provine, Blogcritics), The Man in the McIntosh Suit is a Filipino-American take on Depression-era noir featuring mistaken identities, speakeasies, and lost love.
The year is 1929 and Bobot is just another migrant worker in rural California. Or rather, a migrant worker with a law degree from the Philippines reduced to manual labor in America. Bobot, like so many other young Filipinos, finds himself bunking in the fields picking fruit by day. When his cousin writes claiming to have spotted his estranged wife in nearby San Francisco, he swipes a co-worker’s favorite nightclub suit and heads to the big city to find her. What follows is classic noir with seedy dives, mouthy pool sharks, and obsession.
