His trilogy of crime novels featuring Chinese-American police detective Robert Chow set in 1970s Chinatown has also won awards and garnered praise.

The subsequent books in the series Snakes Can't Run (2010) and One Red Bastard (2012) both earned a Publishers Weekly Starred Review.

It revolves around young protagonist Jing-nan, a cynical, Joy Division-obsessed UCLA dropout forced to return to Taipei to run his family's night market food stall in order to pay his late grandfather's old gambling debts.

In 2020, Lin wrote, published and released his first young adult novel, David Tung Can't Have a Girlfriend Unless He Gets into an Ivy League College (Kaya Press).

He also starred alongside his wife Cindy Cheung in a music video for Magnetic North and Taiyo Na's "Home:Word" directed by Wong Fu Productions.